Replication is the oldest data distribution technique within RDBMS and has been supported by SQL Server since version 6.5. Replication's main purpose is to copy data from one server to another, which is used as a marginal high availability feature for certain types of applications.

Replication agents are the key handlers that carry out all the tasks associated with replication, which includes creating a snapshot of schema and data, detecting updates, detecting conflict updates, and propagating changes between servers. All the replication agents are run under SQL Server agent job steps and these executables can be called directly from a batch script, or command-line operation. Replication provides a default profile for each agent and additional pre-defined profiles for the log reader agent, distributor agent, and merge agent. The agent profile contains a set of parameters that are used each time an agent runs at the Distributor server instance...