Should snapshot agent continue to run in transactional replication?
I have noticed that the snapshot agent job runs hourly and it looks like it does a refresh of the publications (literally, a new snapshot?) Should this be doing a refresh this often if no new articles are being added or changed?


NO. Snapshot should not be run frequently, unless you are adding/dropping articles. 

Also, Transactional replication uses Concurrent Snapshot processing; meaning it does not hold share locks in place during the entire snapshot generation, thereby allowing users to continue working uninterrupted while replication creates initial snapshot files.

The sync_method parameter governs which mode is used - native, character, concurrent or concurrent_c.