Data Type Support
All data types are supported with Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 transactional replication. Prior to SQL Server version 6.5, replication of text and image data was limited to snapshot replication (scheduled table refresh) and timestamp columns were always translated to binary. User-defined data types are supported as well. You should consider, however, the costs incurred with replicating text, image, or user-defined data types.

<b>Updating text and image data is costly for storage and performance. You should try to minimize the amount and frequency of text and image replication in your application. You can establish the maximum size of text data that can be replicated by the application by setting the SQL Server configuration value max text repl size. By default this value is limited to 64K, however, it can be changed using SQL Enterprise Manager or sp_configure. The same setting controls the maximum size of image data that can be added to a replicated column.</b>

When setting up replication, you can choose to maintain custom data types across all servers or have the publisher translate or "map" those data types to a standard data type. This is particularly useful when replicating data for inclusion in existing databases in the enterprise do not support the user-defined data types you want to include in your development project. Be advised, however, as with any data type mapping or translation, a minor performance penalty is incurred.