Does MSFT provide access to debug libraries to help decipher error and system messages
Are there any distance restrictions on replication
In a merge (or master to master) scenario can you set up one instance as the primary and
one as a secondary as far as conflict resolution
Performance issues/system resources? OK or resource hog
How does the product intialize? flat files or database tables
How robust is is as far as recovery situations? does it come back or do you have to spend a lot of tim
manually reconfiguring?

I am looking at this product for a high availablilty and high security situation so I'm sorry for all the questions but I do appreciate the help

TI

Mark,
my answers inline:
I could write a lot more so please post back if any issue requires more
detail...
Regards,
Paul Ibison

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system messages?
You can look at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/trblsql/tr_syserrors1_6m5z.asp
but there aren't any really detailed message lists that I have heard of.
Most are self explanatory though and some that are not are now fairly well
known (eg www.replicationanswers.com)
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No, although agent timeouts and other parameters may need to be optimised
for this method.
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By default, the publisher wins conflicts with subscribers. The first
subscriber takes the priority of the publisher if it is a conflict between
subscribers. Priority numbers can be assigned to subscribers as an
alternative resolution method.
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This depends on the type of replication, the number of changes/transactions,
push or pull, remote distributor or combined publisher/subscriber etc.
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BCP text files or FTP text files, although you can initialize with the
option that the subscriber already has the data, in which case the textfiles
don't contain table data.
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In my experience it is robust. You may have configuration issues if you set
up a more 'exotic' configuration eg VPN replication across non-trusted
domains, but these are familiarization issues.
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