>I know that having one DB would be the idea solution but opening up our internal network to the outside world (e.g. Internet) is not an option at this time due to security. Yes we have firewalls and other securities in place but it's not my decision.
>
>Without first reading about it, do you know off hand if MSSQL handles this kind of replication rather "seamlessly" (rule-based?) or is it going to be pretty hairy implimenatation?
>
>I'll check in to the use of ROWGUIDCOL property for pkey values. Thanks again Chris.
>
>

John,

There are two ways I can think of where you can still work with the identity column on both databases.

Solution #1 implicates calculating how much growth you anticipate for your databases and setting up the identity column seed so high in one of the databases that both sequences will not overlap in the foreseeable future.

Solution #2 uses a different starting number for each database and sets the increment at two. Say DB1 has a seed of 1 and DB2 a seed of 2. When each of them use the increment value no numbers will ever be repeated and you should be safe for future growth too. #2 seems more elegant IMO.

I think I picked this up from the administering SQL Server MOC.