I understand basic replication methods but I need help with the viability of setting up a particular situation.
The Non-Technical Situation
We have an vendor supplied accounting application in use in my department that has an SQL server db backend. The app's hosting server and database server are maintained by the organization's IT department. My department is legally an independent entity from the company itself but we have to rely on the main company's IT department for application and database hosting. My organization's IT department does not have the resources or official responsibility to provide anything above and beyond maintaining the servers. I have been hired by my department as an in house data analyst to provide BI that goes above and beyond the simplistic reporting built into the application. The department head's plan was to have a replicated copy of the production db that I could access directly for creating custom queries, views, tables, etc.
The Technical Situation
The IT department is understandably hesitant to let someone else outside of their department from accessing a production database which is where the plan of replication comes in. I know that we could setup a scheduled one way merge replication to a second DB that I could then access for the functionality that I need. This way, I could have my hand in the data while making the IT department happy knowing that any changes that I make on the replicated database will never make it back to the production db. The questions I have are about merge replication and schema. When you originally setup the replication, the database schema and data will be replicated to the subscriber. What happens if I wanted to add custom views, lookup tables, stored procedures, etc. to the replicated database? I will not alter the existing structure of tables, sps, etc. in any way. I will just want to add additional objects that serve my purposes. Will this break the replication because I've added to the subscriber's schema or will the data flow from the publisher to the subscriber as usual since all original schema objects will exist in the subscriber's schema unaltered?
Like I've said, I don't know enough about this type of situation to speak intelligently about it. And the department head needs to know if her plan is viable before she pushes for the replicated db.
TIA.