We as Database Administrators have to work with loads and loads of data, data availability is very important even in situations like hardware failures, network failures and hence, data replication plays an important part.
The production setup I am working with, has SQL 2005 mirroring replication, snapshots can be used to make sure SQL mirroring is taking place.
Database Name: SECONDARYDB
CREATE DATABASE snapshot1 ON ( NAME = ‘SECONDARYDB_DATA’, FILENAME ='<any disk location>\snapshot1.ss’ ) AS SNAPSHOT OF SECONDARYDB;
After creating a snapshot (snapshot1) , you can query for the latest changes done in the PRIMARYDB in the created snapshot.
Database World 