Replication

Hi
We have 50 tables on our live Database instance. I need to replicate 10 of these tables for reporting and archving purposes. What is the best approach. Any good sites recommended for reference? Database is SQLServer 7.0.
ThanksI can tell you about our experience here. We are in the same boat that you are in, we have a production server and a reports server. I've implemented 2 types of replication Transaction and Snapshot.

Snapshot
Easiest to implenent, however if these tables have a lot of data could put a stress on the network and Disk IO on servers.

Transaction
Required us to create indexes using PRIMARY KEY constraints NOT CREATE INDEX. A little more complicated, but less data during the transmission, therefore less stress on system

It also depends on how up-to-date the data needs to be on the reporting server. For use it was 24 hrs behind, so it represented data as of yesterday. In this case I could setup transactional to be every 4 hrs. For Transactional should know your production servers daily activity, highly active server with a large window for replication (ie. 4hrs for use) could cause system stress and therefore the replication window may need to be decreased.

A lot to think about also you need to know were you will place the Distribution Service, we placed ours on the Reporting server.

Replication for SQL Server 7.0 (http://www.microsoft.com/SQL/techinfo/administration/70/replication.asp)

Here there are a few links at the bottom of the page on replication

SQL Server Performance (http://www.sql-server-performance.com/default.asp)