Is RDA Appropriate?

The scenario is this:

User on device enters data. Eventually sends it up to Server.

On Server, two possible things can happen to the data.

1) More data gets created (specifically a child table gets filled in)

2) Original data gets changed in ways that are probably pretty minor (error correction, etc).

The changes ultimately need to go back to the Device. More specifically, the user needs to decide what data he wants to be able to view on the device still.

RDA is intended as a one way synchronization though.

Is this a scenario I can handle programatically through RDA or is Merge Replication more appropriate?

In RDA the client side changes are tracked and the changes are sent to the Server. The server side changes are pulled down to the client table by table. All existing tables on the client are deleted and new tables are created. This is how bi-directional sync happens in RDA. In Merge incremental changes are replicated from the client to the server and vice-versa.

In your case you can use either RDA or Merge. Both are viable

Regards

Ambrish