Advice needed

[warez_willy]

I have a WinForms project I've done in C# and SQL2008

The client accesses the data on a stand alone server at the workplace.

he wants to go home work on it there and then come back to work and synchronise all his changes.

SqlServer2008 express is installed on all the client machines involved.

IS Redgate a good choice for solving this problem?

I'd like to have the client easily "backup" and "Restore" his data onto/from a usb Thumbdrive. Ideally I'd like to make this function within my application.

Thanks for helping a newbie

[Brian Donahue]

Hello,

It's hard to say. On small applications, SQL Synchronization SDK works great in this sort of one-way synchronization, provided that the databases' schemata are set up in a way that allows consistent identities (record IDs) in all of the tables. On any data synchronization, it is going to match rows in the table based on primary key or user-defined columns (provided the column(s) contains unique data). Two-way synchronization starts to get a bit hairy because you would have to code some sort of logic to handle "conflicts" between records that had been updated simultaneously on the client and the server. This is not automatically handled by SDK.

Database size is an issue because SDK reads all of the data in the tables that you want to compare, so worst-case, if you have a huge database with infrequently-changed data, you could potentially waste a lot of time comparing the same data over and over and over again. This can be mitigated using the WHERE clause property, for instance if you assign a block of identities to your laptop user, you could compare only his data and not the whole kit and caboodle.

So no matter how you decide to go about this, it will probably be a bit of a job for you. The SDK can take care of the comparison and synchronization bits if your schema is well thought out and appropriate for this sort of task.
_________________
Brian Donahue
Technical Support
Red Gate Software Ltd.
44 (0)870 160 0037 ext 8521
US and CAN 1-866-RED GATE ext 8521

[warez_willy]

I really appreciate the thoughtful response. Looks like I have a bit of study to do. I haven't even begun to search around for samples and walkthroughs on just using SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 to accomplish this task. I thought maybe there was a Red Gate answer/sample/walkthrough that would instantly solve my problem. If there is one then I'd love to hear from anyone who knows about it.