Microsoft® SQL Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

The Publisher, Distributor, and Subscriber Magazine Metaphor

Any SQL Server can play up to three distinct roles in a data replication environment:

• Publication server—The publication server (or publisher) contains the database or databases that will be published (the magazine!). This is the source of the data that is to be replicated to other servers. In Figure 19.3, the Customer table (an article in the magazine) in the AdventureWorks2008 database is the data to be published. To publish data, the database that contains the data that will be published must first be enabled for publishing. Full publishing configuration requirements are discussed later in this chapter, in the section “Setting Up Replication.”

Figure 19.3 The publisher, distributor, ...