First, let me explain the situation: My company is planing to use Sharepoint for intranet and as replacement of file servers, so there will be lot of data inside the SQL databases. I'm the DBA and so I'm responsible to implement and administrator the SQL servers of the Sharepoint. There is one SQL servers (for Sharepoint and content) and my task will later be to implement a transactional replication to a second SQL server. We're using Sharepoint 2013 and SQL 2012 standard edtion.
Because I never implemented a replication before, I've tested this out in a test environment today. I was surprised there was so much drawbacks or at least obstacles:
* Every database need a own publication
* New tables will not be include in existing publications
* Only tables with a primary key can be replicated
* (...)
So I've asked the sharepoint administrator if there are later many additional database once sharepoint is installed, because I've to create a new publicatoin for each database. The answer was, only a new 'sharepoint site collection' would need an additional database and this would occur seldom. Sounds great. So I also asked if there are newly created tables during operation, because I would have the add those articles to existing publications. The sharepoint administrator wasn't sure about this. So:
1. Question: Are there many additional tables creating after sharepoint was installed during normal operation by users?
Since tables without primary key can't be replicated:
2. Question: Have all sharepoint tables a primary key?
(For those who like advice me to implement mirroring or AlwaysOn AvailbilityGroups instead, our company has already discussed this point and decided to use replication)
Thanks