Replication Queries - Need Help

Hi

I am going to do a setup a replication between a remote server and a db
server in india. Both the servers are running SQL Server 2005.

The data has to be replicated not transactional, there is latency time of 1-2
hours

1. What type of replication I should go with. - Recommendations
2. I need to compare Replication Vs Log Shipping
3. What are the Boundary Conditions
4. Fail Over Mechanism
5. How reliable is Replication over WAN?
6. The subscriber is a reporting db and it will have lot of data of select
queries fired in it. Is it going to create locks when replication happens.

Thanks

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Transactional replication works well for reporting purposes. It is preferable
to log shipping in that log shipping will require an exclusive database lock
when applying the transaction logs, unlike transactional replication. When
the commands are applied at the subscriber in transactional replication there
will be locks like for any other data modification. If this is a problem, it
can be mitigated when reporting by using the snapshot committed isolation
level, or NOLOCK.
Replication is resilient over a LAN and ACID properties are recognised.
You mention failover - this is quite a different requirement to a reporting
database and for this I'd generally recommend database mirroring.
HTH,
Paul Ibison, www.replicationanswers.com