I have read many articles stating that you shouldn't really use
transaction replication to deploy a warm standby server but due to
cost constraints this is the method that we have to use (we don't want
to upgrade to SQL 2000 Enterprise Edition).

Our environment is:

Server A - publisher and distributer
Server B - subscriber

We have an internet application used by a third party and cannot
afford to lose any transactions.

My questions is when a disaster causes us to switch to using the
subscriber, this database will then be updated. When we have fixed the
problem with the publisher how do we re-synchronise the publisher so
that we can switch back to using it as our database.

The options as I see it are:

1. Keep using the subscriber as the main database and then create the
replication environment so that this becomes the publisher.

2. Stop all updates to the system. Restore the subscriber to server A
and recreate the replication environment.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Dave,
there will be some difficult issues with what you propose.
What will you do about defaults? They exist on the publisher but not the
subscriber. You'll need to add them on the subscriber before going live. The
same applies to Identity values, but these changes can't be done using alter
table.
Other things to take into account - users, permissions, user-defined
datatypes: these are not so much of an issue and you can use
sp_addscriptexec whenever you alter these on the publisher.
We have had a few threads over the last 2/3 weeks on the pros and cons of
log shipping versus transactional replication which you might like to look
at. You can set up log shipping using scripts and don't require enterprise
edition. If you can cope with the latency (1 minute min) then this is a much
easier way to go.
HTH,
Paul Ibison

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Many thanks Paul, can you please point me in the right direction for
finding further information on setting up Log Shipping using scripts
so that I can decide which method to use?

Dave
funnily enough, someone else just asked the same question this morning. Have copied my reply..
although log shipping out of the box is only available for enterprise
edition, it can be done on any edition with a bit of handcoding. At the end
of the day, it is simply copying a log from one box to another and restoring
it without recovering it, with a bit of logging thrown in for reporting
purposes. If you don't want to create it yourself, there are scripts to do
this on the web (eg
http://www.sql-server-performance.com/sql_server_log_shipping.asp), in the
sql server resource kit (and the back office resource kit) but Microsoft
Product Support doesn't support these utilities.
HTH,
Paul Ibison