Which database has the best support for replication

Question

I have a fairly good feel for what MySQL replication can do. I\'m wondering what other databases support replication, and how they compare to MySQL and others?

Some que

Answer 1

Just adding to the options with SQL Server (especially SQL 2008, which has Change Tracking features now). Something to consider is the Sync Framework from Microsoft. There's a few options there, from the basic hub-and-spoke architecture which is great if you have a single central server and sometimes-connected clients, right through to peer-to-peer sync which gives you the ability to do much more advanced syncing with multiple 'master' databases.

The reason you might want to consider this instead of traditional replication is that you have a lot more control from code, for example you can get events during the sync progress for Update/Update, Update/Delete, Delete/Update, Insert/Insert conflicts and decide how to resolve them based on business logic, and if needed store the loser of the conflict's data somewhere for manual or automatic processing. Have a look at this guide to help you decide what's possible with the different methods of replication and/or sync.

For the keen programmers the Sync Framework is open enough that you can have the clients connect via WCF to your WCF Service which can abstract any back-end data store (I hear some people are experimenting using Oracle as the back-end).

My team has just gone release with a large project that involves multiple SQL Express databases syncing sub-sets of data from a central SQL Server database via WAN and Internet (slow dial-up connection in some cases) with great success.