Is it possible to sync two sql express servers with MS Sync Framework

Question

I have the next task.

Let's assume that we have below tables in a DB

Vendor
===========
Id
Name
.....

Product
===========
Id
VendorId
Name
.....

I need to be able to Sync main DB server with client DB server (one way sync), but there should be a possibility to apply some filters on sync process (for example for cleint DB 1 sync all Products where Vendor is John). As far as I understood - SQL Server replication will not help me, because in this case I have to use SQL Server Enterprise Edition. I researched that Sync Framework allows to use filter.
But, Is it possible to sync two sql express servers with MS Sync Framework?
I found that it is posiible to sync SQL Server <-> SQL Server SE and SQL Server <-> SQL Server CE

Answer 1

the SqlSyncProvider in Sync Framework works with Sql Server, Sql Express or Sql Azure (even the upcoming Sql 2012 LocalDB).

check out this sample. Synchronizing SQL Server and SQL Express

simply change the connections strings to point to Sql Express for both local and remote provider and it should work.

the link contains a walkthrough of using a filters as well.

Answer 2

Take a look at this Stack Overflow question: Microsoft Sync Framework, Microsoft Entity Framework 4.1 & SQL CE 4.0.

You can use the SqlSyncProvider to do what you want to do, but there will be substantial custom work to use the Express database on the client side especially if you want to do anything fancy with filtering. You can define static filters by "provisioning" the database with what Sync Framework calls "scopes", but if you need the ability to do dynamic filtering you are going to have to develop a custom provider for much of it.

Only SQL Ce is supported on the client out of the box, but if you can switch to using SQL Ce the tutorial in the attached SO article should help you out quite a bit.