• Yes, you could quite possibly have improvements by directing queries to a replicated database. Less chance of blocking and generally less demand on the primary database.

    Many people set up reporting databases for that reason. You can also replicate a subset of the data if that is acceptable so the reporting queries run faster. For instance maybe you only need previous 12 mionths of data, but production has 10 years. Just refresh reporting databas with previous 12 months.

    Another possibility is to aggregate or otherwise manipulate data for reporting. You might replicate to reporting database, then run some jobs early morning to combine data into summary tables in the reporting db, then run reports off them, and ready for users when they get to the office. All kinds of options based on your business needs.