I have a single server with two financial companies setup under multisite in Baan 5.0c, in which they share quite a few tables. We are looking at splitting these up because of unreliable WAN connections for one side. The new scarnario requires that there be a one way data exchange on a monthly basis to the same company setup on a second server. In other words, one server now becomes two (app & database together). One company on one side and two on the other. The server with two companies is a local financial company and the second financial company is to be updated monthly.

What is the best way to accomplish a one way data exchange ?

Can SQL server replication be used and are there any specific issues replicating at the database level?

The official Baan tool to move data about is Exchange, and it's much enhanced for Multisite in Baan V.

You can set up a relationship, including IP Addresses, and Baan will FTP exported data to the Import Directory on the waiting server, ready for "Regular Import". You can set the import up as a job for full automation, or run at your designation. There is some handshaking - ie, you get a confirmation in the sending company if the file has been accepted for import on the receiving end.

Any number of sql scripts will accomplish the same, but Baan will generate the table structures for you, and you can use definition files instead of hard layouts, incase the table definitions change.

A great document for all of this is from Baan:

Document number U7137A US

Kind of hard to find, but out there on the support site. It's not registred very well, it's called Exchange User Documentation, a word document attached to an email they have posted... Here's the path to find:

ftp://ftp.baan.com/public/dumps/Sol-150963/documents

Thanks for the info. I read the documentation and am concerned about keeping the business logic in sych between my servers for shared tables. If I import via the DAL, will this take care of the business logic?

Yes, that's the idea anyway. It will call all of the DAL table validations, and the field checks if you check that as well. We have seen this done in the debugger, so I know it works. As long as the DAL has all the necessary logic anyway...I would recommend some testing as well.