[AccessD] Replication - how can I tell if indirect occurring

For what it's worth, I have replicated front ends, and I do NOT
recommend it.  The care and feeding of the things is a nightmare.

Charlotte Foust

-----Original Message-----
From: Arthur Fuller [mailto:artful at rogers.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 10:33 AM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: RE: [AccessD] Replication - how can I tell if indirect
occurring


First of all, let me apologize for the slow response. The last two-three
days there has been an area-wide net-outage here. (Class action suit
anyone? I notice the bill doesn't change when it's the ISP's fault.)

Why do you want indirect synchs, particularly when the servers can see
one another? I don't see the logic here. Indirect is designed for
situations where the BE's cannot always see each other, for example a
laptop in a distant hotel used by a travelling salesperson, who connects
using the net and uses FTP for replication. If the replicas can see each
other and you don't want replication to happen automatically, don't use
the synchronizer. Instead do a manual (unmanaged) replication.
/Tools/Replication/Synchronize Now, IIRC. Further, I still don't
understand your need for three synchronizers. One can do it all, AFIAK.
Of course, maybe I'm missing something important here.

Finally, I have never experimented with replicating an FE, only a BE.
But for a long time (until we moved to SQL 2000), I replicated the BE's
all over the place without issues. At one point, there were over 70
replicas, distributed across 4 branch offices connected through a vpn.
Each office had a server and a collection of PCs. A synchronizer handled
branch-level replication. The server at HQ handled server replication.
Both processes occurred every 5 minutes, so the longest it would take
anyone anywhere to see changes made elsewhere was 10 minutes. It never
failed once in over 6 months of use.

I could be wrong about all the above. I found a scheme that worked
beautifully and stuck with it. There may be better solutions.

Arthur

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of John Skolits
Sent: July 14, 2003 12:52 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: RE: [AccessD] Replication - how can I tell if indirect
occurring


I will have one replica here (my officer) and the other 2 on remote
servers. All servers connected to each other via VPN. Can't do direct
because I've read it's a bad idea to do that on WAN.

I think I'm slowly figuring it out except, I've read where:

"To prevent direct synchronization from occurring, make sure the replica
is not stored in a shared folder; "

I want to have the replicas on 3 servers all with synchronizers running
with indirect Synchs. Then use those replicas as backends to various
frontend applications. The FEs will be linked to the replica in their
perspective local server.

But, in order to link I have to share the database folders. The white
paper indicated, if I shared the folder, then a direct sync would occur
(implied: Even over a VPN).

So it looks like I can't have a FE/BE design on replicas that run with
indirect synching.

What do you think?

John

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