I am looking for a few pointers about data replication and synchronisation. Can you help?
At the moment I am just trying to decide what technologies to evaluate.

The system I am specifying will have several modules, some of which will be run on separate computers which will not always be linked to the network (e.g. laptops).
The system is an accounting type product in that each module enters information about the purchase or usage of stock items. What I need to achieve is a centralised stock control where the purchases and usages of all stock items is replicated to all computers.

I am keen not to re-invent wheels if some existing technologies can be used. So far I have come up with four possiblities:

1) Write it all from the ground up in VFP, perhaps using offline views ... this is a lot of work.

2) Use SQL server technology (I have never used it myself) ... the snag is that each end user site would need a licenced copy of SQL Server and that is not an option.

3) Use the new MSDE with its free runtime licencing. I really thought this was my answer but I read that MSDE requires SQL Server licences to do replication?

4) Use the Replication technology built into the Jet Engine as used in Access. Perhaps by mirroring my fox dbf tables in mdb's and using the mdb's for replication and then copying it back into dbf tables.

Many thanks in advance for your advice.

David