Peer-to-peer replication and Oracle real application clusters

Hello,
I have a question I hope can be answered fully.
Some time last year, I attended a Microsoft presentation in Dallas and a sql
server specialist from microsoft (I think his name was srikan) mentioned
during Q&A that SQL Server 2005 has peer-to-peer replication which is a
comparable solution to oracle's real application cluster with some
restriction.
I recently attended another presentation also at Microsoft but this time by
their partner that are suppose to be SQL server experts. This speaker said
that it is not a comparable solution. He gave several reasons and they
seemed to make sense but then again, a microsoft technical specialist said
differently last year.
Did the product change? Who should I listen to? My co-workers say I should
listen to microsoft because they created the product but the other guy seems
to know a lot also and said he used to be an oracle dba. I am confused.
Anybody can help here? I don't want to ask Oracle because they want a lot of
information from me before they will answer and their newsgroup people are
quite unfriendly.
Thank you.
aK.
No, peer-to-peer replication is not a replacement to RAC. Unfortunately,
the TS would be wrong in a literal interpretation. If you look at the basic
data flow, there is some similarity in the solution which disappears when
you start looking a lot deeper.
I don't know a huge amount about RAC, but I understand the basics. With RAC
you are essentially plugging N servers into an Oracle architecture that
access a single database. What you wind up with is theoretically pooling
all of your hardware resources together (memory, processors, network I/O)
which can be basically treated by an application as a single massive server.
They still point to a single database on the backend. You still have to
deal with all of the issues related to changes coming from multiple servers
into a single database which now has to resolve conflicting changes on the
fly and several other implementation related issues.
Peer-to-peer replication is a logical extension to bi-directional
transactional replication. This handles the data layer only. The
replication engine is used to replicate like it says "from everyone - to
everyone". There is ZERO conflict detection or resolution, so your data
changes must be partitioned. If two users were to change the same piece of
data on different servers at the same time, it would create a huge
synchronization issue.
What problem are you trying to solve?
Mike
http://www.solidqualitylearning.com
Disclaimer: This communication is an original work and represents my sole
views on the subject. It does not represent the views of any other person
or entity either by inference or direct reference.
"Angie" <NO_Angie_Kong_SPAM@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ORao5BrMGHA.648@.TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> Hello,
> I have a question I hope can be answered fully.
> Some time last year, I attended a Microsoft presentation in Dallas and a
> sql server specialist from microsoft (I think his name was srikan)
> mentioned during Q&A that SQL Server 2005 has peer-to-peer replication
> which is a comparable solution to oracle's real application cluster with
> some restriction.
> I recently attended another presentation also at Microsoft but this time
> by their partner that are suppose to be SQL server experts. This speaker
> said that it is not a comparable solution. He gave several reasons and
> they seemed to make sense but then again, a microsoft technical specialist
> said differently last year.
> Did the product change? Who should I listen to? My co-workers say I should
> listen to microsoft because they created the product but the other guy
> seems to know a lot also and said he used to be an oracle dba. I am
> confused.
> Anybody can help here? I don't want to ask Oracle because they want a lot
> of information from me before they will answer and their newsgroup people
> are quite unfriendly.
> Thank you.
>
> aK.
>
sql