The intro is a good summary of what it can do and is well worth a read. For Lotus Notes developers, "tombstone" = "replication stub", "tick count" = "item version", "replica ID" = "replica ID" :-) The engine itself runs with a MSSQL CE database for the metadata store. You can also develop your own

The ramifications of this go well beyond just a replacement for MSSQL replication or MS ActiveSync. With this framework, it's relatively simple to add a site deployment feature to your web application such as the SiteReplication tool and QuickDeploy feature I wrote for Ektron (V2 of these features will use the Sync Framework). It's not as simple as Lotus Notes' database replication and selective replication feature where it's built in and using it is a matter of changing a few settings. However, with a good MSSQL storedproc developer and C# coder on your team, adding a feature like this to your web site should only take 3 months instead of a year or more. With MSSQL 2008's built-in support for table change tracking ("sharing extensions"), you can also cut down your work because you won't have to add multiple columns to each table and add triggers to track row changes; the biggest negative is you'll have to wait until at least Q3'08 before MSSQL 2008 is released..

Good job, Ray. Hopefully, this gives Lotus inspiration on letting Notes/Domino developers hook into its replication engine so we can sync files or a small RDBMS with the Notes replication stream when a Notes client does replication or so we can implement Notes client to client replication.