Replication question

In Access 8.0, how "smart" is the replication feature? For example, if you've got a relationship between two tables, say tblPeople and tblBranchLocations, where tblPeople contains a foreign key, BranchLocationID. If a remote user (using Replica1) adds a few people into tblPeople, but at one point, has to add a person that works at a brand new BranchLocation. The BranchLocation gets added to tblBranchLocations, receiving a new BranchLocationID because it is an AutoNumber field.

At the same time, a different remote user (using Replica2) adds a few people, some of which work at the same new location, but which is not yet in their replicated table. So, they add the same "new" BranchLocation to tblBranchLocations and tie that BranchLocationID to the person's record.

When the remote users submit their replicas at to the administrator for synchronization, it looks like tblBranchLocations has BOTH new entries (one from Replica1, and one from Replica2) people records pointing to each. Obviously, this could cause problems!!! It doesn't appear that is what the Resolve Conflicts option is for. In the quick test that I ran to create this example, Access didn't see any conflicts to resolve.

Can this issue be handled more appropriately? What design considerations should be made when dealing with replication?

Please CC any replies via email.

Thanks!!
-- Brad
<bradg_at_thincsolutns.com>
<http://www.thincsolutns.com>
Received on Tue Jul 07 1998 - 00:00:00 CEST