The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - Tool to sync data between sites?

Tool to sync data between sites?

Hi,

I'm looking at solutions to allow branch offices to modify data on their side, upload those changes to be merged in a central database, and have this up-to-data central DB be synced back to the branch offices, ie. a star diagram.

Branch offices are connected by modem or ADSL/cable (ie. must be solid, by providing COMMIT/ROLLBACK in case the connection fails at some point), and need at least one update/day, and ideally, this operation be transparent, ie. not require any action by users.

Besides rsync, which solution would you recommend?

Thank you

Frederic Faure
Monday, November 3, 2003

Uh, data storage method? SQL Server? Oracle? MySQL? Flat files?

Philo

Philo
Monday, November 3, 2003

Your forgot XML. ;)

Andrew Burton
Monday, November 3, 2003

Until then, we were using a home-made solution to stock data, but we're moving to SQLite :-)

Frederic Faure
Monday, November 3, 2003

sounds exactly like CVS to me.

van pelt
Monday, November 3, 2003

Sybase Replication Server can replicate changes from most any SQL-based DBMS. Not sure about SQLite, though.

http://www.sybase.com/products/highavailability

MR
Monday, November 3, 2003

Thx for the tip :-) I doubt source-control would be a good solution, as databases contain binary stuff.

As for replication: Does it enable merging, ie. any change made to a DB at a branch office is merged into the central DB, or is it just come copy/pasting of a whole DB?

Frederic Faure
Monday, November 3, 2003

It works with updates (inserts, updates, deletes) only, although if you really, really wanted to I suppose you could ship the whole thing off every so often.

If you want, the updates can happen in near-realtime, too.

MR
Monday, November 3, 2003