Nate Johnson has a few things which might make SQL Server transactional replication easier for you:
For what seems like years, I’ve bemoaned the fact that SQL Transactional Replication doesn’t come with a “Just Trust Me” option. I’ll explain more about what I mean in a moment. The other thing I’ve complained about is that there’s no “Pause” button — which not entirely accurate, since obviously you could just stop the distribution and subscription agents. But specifically what I mean is, it’s not easy to ‘put it on hold so you can make some schema changes to one of the tables that’s being replicated’, and then easily “Resume” it after you’re done with said changes.
Well, I’m happy to say that now I have both of these tools/methodologies in my arsenal!
Read on for those tips and a couple more.