New Site Entries:

Just added Lizet's blog above next to Nigel's. Was researching the known issues and workarounds with merge when combining filters with joins and found some great material and analysis on her blog.

I've just started on a couple of articles for replication on SQL 2008 looking at the new bells and whistles etc. From what I've seen there are some useful but relatively minor changes compared to the SQL Server 2005 upgrade. This then led me to think what should be on the replication wish list for the future?

Personally for the next version of SQL Server, or for a service pack upgrade, I'd like to see better troubleshooting options and general transparency of the merge process as very much top of my wish list. Most people using merge don't have time to track down exactly why there might be problems with certain combinations of filters and joins, and in the worst case the existence of non-convergence can rapidly lose confidence from a client. File-based Replication that could be used to replicate via email is another wish but this would probably be a bit like the Oracle publishers facility introduced in SQL Server 2005 and only really be useful to a select few, so I'd position this much lower on the wish list. Another thing I'd like is transactional over HTTPS - trying to get through nested firewalls using replication is a real pain, and mostly SSL is permitted. When I get a second I'll post up Connect items for these and we'll see what the response is....

BTW I'm always on the lookout for any extra bits of replication-related consultancy work (at very reasonable rates!). Generally I contract at large multinationals, so it's refreshing to occasionally take time off to do my replication work, even if it's a couple of hours fixing SQL Server issues remotely or QAing a setup. So far I've done replication consultancy for firms big and small eg:

	Pharmaceutical Retailer. Merge replication setup migrated onto another server. 2 days.
	Veterinary Software Supplier. Health check of existing merge setup and some modifications made on identity range handling. 3 days.
	Agricultural Retailer and Wholesaler. Conceptual design. 2 days.
	Business Information and Magazine Publisher. Standardisation of the merge publications for each magazine and general problem-solving. Several weeks.
	Reinsurance Broker. Healthcheck. 1 day.
	Medical Staffing / Recruitment. Troubleshooting of the data migration strategy. 2 days.
	Oil Exploration / Shipping. Design and implementation of merge publication using filtering to all 12 vessels. 2 weeks.

If you're also interested, please contact me at Paul.Ibison@Replicationanswers.com.