In short, it works very well, and the data is nearly real-time. We were one of the first customers to order the read-only DB, and while there were some bumps at the beginning, we’ve never regretted purchasing it. A few things to keep in mind:
- Not all tables are available for SQL access. Pretty much everything you would want to query should be there, but some system tables (and a few that may contain PII) are locked down. The list of available tables has increased since we started.
- Unless this has changed recently, you get one (or maybe two) accounts. You can’t just create users on your own. If the password is allowed to expire, you’re down.
- You will need to supply a list of approved IP addresses from which you can connect. In my case, that means that if I’m working from home, I need to VPN to the office before I can connect through Azure Data Studio.
- We have occasionally experienced connection problems after receiving ERP updates. The cases have been resolved fairly quickly, but everything that relied on the RODB was down until it was fixed.
On the whole, the read-only database has been a great addition to our environment and it greatly helped to cushion the transition from our old on-premise system to the Epicor cloud. I hope this helps!
-Todd