I plan to use Merge Replication to sync data between a SQL Server 2008/SQL Server 2008 R2 and 1000 barcode scanners with Windows Moible 5 to manage 1 million assets. All asset's inventory status should be checked in every two months (because all inventory history data must be keeped in database, I have to create two table, INVENTORY and INVENTORY ASSET. INVENTORY includes inventory-sn, inventory time, location, etc. INVENTORY ASSET includes inveontory_sn, assets ID, inventory check status, etc.) Because the data size is very big and every scanner's storage is only 1GB. I use HOST_NAME to filter every location to reduce the sync data size for every device. I have some questions:
Q1. Can I only sync inventory data from every device into SQL Server 2008? (I check some merge replication books and online articles, it seems impossible. When I setup publisher, only two selections for synchronization direction: Bidirectional and Download only to Subscriber)
Q2. If I can't sync inventory data from a device into SQL Server 2008. Can I sync INVENTORY and INVENTORY ASSET's schema (table only but not data into device), and inset inventory data into INVENTORY and INVENTORY ASSET table during the inventory. Then to sync the data back to SQL Server 2008?
Q3. If the answers of Q1 and Q2 are no, can I sync other tables only into every device, then create INVENTORY and INVENTORY ASSET table in the synced database on a device? After inventory is finished, I use my mobile program to insert the records in these two tables into SQL Server 2008? Or do you have any good idea?
Thanks for your help
Charlie