How To Handle Schema With Sql Server 2000 Merge Replication
May 29, 2007
I have a problem with sql server merge replication in sql server 2000.
If my db owner €œdbo€? and replication setup under €œsa€? account it works with out any problem. But when I use another db owner it can not work properly.
For an example I have customer table ([dbo]. [Customer]) When I setup merge replication under sa account it€™s work properly.
Again I was setup merge replication using another db owner ([INV]. [Customer]) It doesn€™t work.
I wonder if I can ask for some advise? I wish to use SQL 2005 and merge replication but I have a few concerns over the schema changes that I am allowed to do on the publisher.
Ideally I want sql replication to push all my schema changes from the publisher to the subscribers but I don't know if it can. or even if it is recommended.
I see the BOL suggesting that schema repl. was mainly intended for ALTER type of statemenets, but can I use it for CREATE and DROP type DDL too?
For example, if I add a new table at the publisher I presume I have to add a new article too for this table. Then how can I create a new snapshot? Is this even the right way of doing it? Similarly if I want to DROP a table at the publisher I'm guessing I have to also delete any existing articles too, then recreate the snapshot.
Are there better / safer ways of doing schema changes? Perhaps I'm best disabling publishing and asking each remote site / db to update their schema manually and then re-enabling the publisher?
I 'm trying to set up merge replication between two servers that have the same schema databases. The two database have the majority of there data the same but as well as data inserted at a later time independently on the two servers. (The two servers were connected in a merge replication scheme that failed at some later time and replication was paused, but users continout to insert data indepentedly at the two servers.)
I need to get them up and running.
I cleaned replication at both servers, I recreated the publication at the puplisher distributor and all is fine.
When I create a push subscription to the subscriper I get the error invalid column name 'rowguidcol' .
I so far managed to have merge replication running on two identical databases (schema and data).
Just some thoughts. After some reading I found that it might be related to identities and identity range or indexes. I set the identity seed and increment at 2, 2 at publisher and at 1,2 at subscriper. (On the same tables at puplisher and subscriber.) Is that ok? is that the way to do it?
Digging a bit more Using the SQL Profiler I can locate the error to happen when sp_MSaddmergetriggers executes.
Thanks allot for any help
Version.
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 - 8.00.2039 (Intel X86) May 3 2005 23:18:38 Copyright (c) 1988-2003 Microsoft Corporation Standard Edition on Windows NT 5.0 (Build 2195: Service Pack 4)
I am using a merge publication set to synchronize schema changes. Why am I getting the following message when I try to sync after having added columns in the publication database using ALTER TABLE statements?
The schema definition of the destination table ... in the subscription database does not match the schema definition of the source table in the publication database. Reinitialize the subscription without a snapshot after ensuring that the schema definition of the destination table is the same as the source table.
Also, why doesn't reinitializing the subscription with @upload_first = false not fix the problem?
I'm trying to set up a merge replication. Publication is created successfully and snapshot also, but when I create pull subscription on subscriber server and merge agent starts, after some time I get an error message of this type:
The schema script '\ANILREPLDATAuncANIL_BEJK_BEJK20070625142735dl_HF_vMSCene_3836.sch' could not be propagated to the subscriber. It seams there is a problem with certain Views and SPs, because tables are successfully created, and some Views and SPs also.
I tried to exclude problematic articles, but every time another one pops up. Up until now, I excluded 7 articles from publication (1 Stored Procedure and 6 Views) but I still get errors.
I gave up because I can't exclude half of the Views and SPs just to make it work.
Is there something that can be done to solve this problem?
Question re Merge rep (pull) and processing order.  We have a group of changes associated with an app upgrade, the scripts run fine on the publisher.   Part of the change includes creation of a new table , followed by altering a view to use new table.Following the change at the publisher, when the sync is kicked off from the subscriber, it fails - the alter of the view throws an'invalid object' error with regard to the new table. Seems as if the view alter is attempted before the dependant table has been created.Â
I have tried to amend the processing order of the view using sp_changearticle, which executes (quickly) with a 0 return code.But it is to no avail , the error still occurs.  is it possible to change the processing order for a view article , which will be applied to schema changes ? Have
I am using SQL Server 2000 SP4 running on a MS Server 2003 with SP2. I am preforming Merge Replication on a continouas basis and the Merge Agent keeps stopping with the error 203 The process could not enumerate changes at the 'Publisher'. There is no additional information available with this error. Does anyone have any sugestions as to why this is happening. I can manually re-start the agent but it will fail again for particular reason.
Hi, I posted about this before, and set out on my own to get this working, and haven't been able to. I'm trying to get merge replication working with my SQL server 2000, and after 2 weeks I still have nothing. I've gone through multiple 'walkthroughs' which all brought me to the same point. I'm getting down to crunch time, and I'm either going to use this or implement my own merge algorigthm (I'd much rather use this). So here's where I've gotten to:
Hi, I am trying to replicate a production database server,on sql server 2000 at a particular geographic location to a new failover database server on sql server 2000 in a different geographic location via internet. The intention here is to use the failover database during times when the production server is down or busy and the synchronization needs to be sceduled for every 10 min. It will be of huge help if any expert could give the detailed process involved and any precautions that need to be taken. I also need to keep inmind to use the ever/odd sequence number generator during the replication implementation. Also, Whether to use row-level or column-level tracking?
I do a merge replication between Sql server 2000 and SQLCE 2.0
On my SQL2000 I have 4 tables i want to merge (specific columns only ) in 1 table for Merge with my SQLCe ( the table will be use for read only)
Question 1: What is the best pratice for keep the information update? Run store procedure before the synch for re-populate the table?:confused: or Make Trigger INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE in the all 4 table?:confused: or a mixte?:confused:
Question 2: Does someone know about some web site talk about this type of trick?
We have a big problem here with merge replication, specifically whenever a schema change occurs. We are replicating schema changes, and triggers/stored procedures. The example is that we changed about 150 stored procedures and about 30 triggers. This is then replicated to the subscriber database (which is also a merge publisher for further remote systems that were offline at the time) over a 10Mb link - hardly low bandwidth. However, the replication process takes about an hour and a half - considering the SQL on the primary server took less than a minute to run this is a big suprise.
We've run a trace to see if we can identitfy what is going on. There seems to be a great number of calls to sp_MSunmarkschemaobject - we are still waiting for a trace to complete to fully analyse this however it looks like it calls this repeatedly for every stored procedure in the database. We are currently re-testing to one of the remote servers with the merge agent set to the slow profile (not much hope that this will alter the poor performance).
This task looks to be excessive - and certainly does not seem to function in a sensible manner. Has anyone else had similar issues or have any suggestions. This is very infuriating as it means that the servers are effectively offline for a minimum of and hour and a half (in fact the remoter servers take over 4 hours !).
I am trying to migrate from my current system, where I do merge replication from Windows Mobile devices running SQL Server CE 2.0 to a central database running SQL Server 2000 sp3a. I want eventually to move to a system running SQL Server 2005 CE replicating to a SQL Server 2005 back-end. But the transition will need to be gradual, and I may have to support both systems for a while until I can convert all clients from the old system to the new. I also need to do thorough testing.
So ... I'm trying to set up a test environment giving me the maximum possible flexibility to do my testing. Ideally, I'd like to set up SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 on a side-by-side basis, in a manner that would potentially allow mobile devices running both SQL Server CE 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 CE to sync with either back-end server.
Can someone provide me with guidance as what is possible to set up here? I know that SQL Server 2000 and 2005 can be installed side-by-side on the same server. It also appears that you can set up SQL Server 2000 so that EITHER SQL Server CE 2.0 OR SQL Server 2005 CE can sync with SQL Server 2000 (see www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/sqlmobile/connectivity-tools.mspx), but I don't know if it's possible for BOTH SQL Server CE 2.0 AND SQL Server 2005 CE to sync to the same SQL Server 2000. As for SQL Server 2005 ... it appears to be possible to set up SQL Server 2005 so that BOTH SQL Server CE 2.0 devices AND SQL Server 2005 CE devices can sync to the same SQL Server 2005 (see web page cited above). However, I don't know if it's possible to set up a SQL Server 2005 server installation in this manner while at the same time having a side-by-side SQL Server 2000 installation supporting any level of mobile merge replication.
I have a merge replication publication that has been running for months. This week the Snapshot started failing, reporting that an article was not included in the publication. I checked and found 3 articles that mysteriously no longer show up as being in the publication. When I attempt to add them it reports that it can't add them because there is already an article by that name in the publication. Apparently some table has lost its rows for these articles while another table(s) still has its rows.
Has anyone had this problem? Is there a solution short of dropping the publication and starting over - a solution that would literally take weeks for us?
we had setup merge replication on 2 db servers. For some reason, the subscription started failing a month back with the error " invalid object sysmergexxxx on the subscriber. I did a reinitialize and now all the changes on the subscriber which werent synced got deleted. I have tried all 3 log recovery tools with no luck. Is there any hope of recovering data. the last backup on the subscriber was a month ago.
My question is regarding syncronization between two databases in MS SQL Server. If we wanted to do MERGE REPLICATION then we can set up pulishers and subscribers using the PS/SQL script (stored procedures) without having to use Enterprise Manager gui tools. I see that after you set all the publishers, distributors and subscribers and you want to start syncronization explicitly the only way you could do is go to Enterprise Manager and find the Publishing/Subscribing Items and right click on them and choost "Start Syncronization" (Sorry I have omitted the nitty-gritty details about how to find those Publishing/Subscribing items in Enterprise Manager).
I am wondering whether we could trigger the start of syncronization using any system stored procedures or without using Enterprise Manager.
I'm currently trying to setup a SQL 2k (SP3, build 922) merge replication publisher and a push subscription to a SQL 2005 (RTM release, no hotfixes) subscriber. The distribution database resides on a separate SQL 2k server (SP3, build 1007). I get the error below leading me to believe merge replication is not compatible between versions.
Replication-agentclassname: agent Agent_Name failed. Procedure or function sp_MSupdatesysmergearticles has too many arguments specified..
I say this b/c I've tried SQL 2005 32-bit and x64 subscribers and both give the same error. Anyone have any ideas if this is by design or just a bug that will be fixed later? Thanks.
We have developed a mobile system that uses merge replication for SQL Mobile to SQL 2005. Previously we have developed mutliple mobile systems using merge replication for SQL Ce to SQL 2000.
Based on the knowledge we had gathered over about 4 years, we applied the synchronisation parameters for the SQL 2005 solution as we would for the SQL 2000 solution.
We have found there are some differences. Not too surprising I suppose, only some of these have us a little baffled.
For instance, there was a little flag called keep_partition_changes in SQL 2000 that is supposedly superceded by the use_partition_groups flag. However, if you don't set up your filtering to conform to the standards required by the use_pre_computed_partitions flag if you want it set to true, then the use_partition_groups flag gets set to false - also the @partition_options falg gets set back to 0 (static or non-unique data) when we want it at 3 (Single Parition, One subscriber).
To top it all off, when you get the use_partition_groups flag working, there are restrictions on which columns you can update on the device. WTF? This seems ludicrous, to be unable to update data at the subscriber - particularly information that allows you to effectively "delete" data from your subscription.
Examples of the current behaviour are as follows,
On initialize for a subscriber, the subscriber will receive their own data as inserts, plus exact multiples of that data as updates. Say there are 100 rows in TableA, the subscriber gets 100 inserts, plus 6000 updates. TableB has 20 rows, the subscriber gets 20 inserts, 1200 updates.
Further to this, performance goes out the window when synchronising changes. Typically the data flow will be between 5 and 200 changes in both directions for a synchronisation. We are seeing sync times in the replication monitor of over 20 seconds per user. Surely the calculations do not take that long. The tables in the database are not very large.
This behaviour gets significantly worse as we load the system. The application has an auto sync function which is timed to operate evry 10 minutes. However, now that there is in excess of 50 or so users on the system, those synchronisation times blow out to multiple minutes and the server starts to thrash. We have looked at indexing and maintenance but to no avail.
Everything still points to the merge replication setup.
So, it seems obvious to me that we are mising some key information about how to set up merge replication in SQL 2005. We woudl be very gratefull if someone could point out the errors of our ways.
Sorry for the convoluted post. Hope someone can help us.
Publisher is 2005 x64, subscribers SS2000 (SP3) and SS2005 x64. Pull agents, no filters on subscriptions. We are seeing many seemingly random conflicts on between SS2000 subscriber and publisher. It happens on several different tables.
One table is never editted, only inserts happening everywhere and deletes happening on the SS2000 subscriber. Deletes will sometimes generate conflict. Reason is '"he row was deleted at 'CTS11.CTS' but could not be deleted at 'cts4a.cts'. Unable to synchronize the row because the row was updated by a different process outside of replication." CTS11 is SS2000 subscriber, CTS4A is publisher.
Probably unrelated bug but when looking at conflicts on this same table in SS2005 conflict viewer, get error "ID is neither a DataColumn nor a DataRelation for table summary (System.dATA)" and then "Column ID does not belong to table summary (System.Data)". ID column is rowguid, only unusual thing about table is that it has varchar(8000) field plus some other fields.
Other tables generate conflicts with this reason "The row was updated at 'CTS11.CTS' but could not be updated at 'cts4a.cts'. The merge process was unable to synchronize the row." I enabled verbose logging in the merge agent but the log file didn't contain any further explanation.
This same topology and schema worked fine when all publishers and subscribers were SS2000.
Any insight into how to fix this would be appreciated.
We have a module in our business-application, that automatically installs merge replication of the business-application's database, both at publisher and subscribers. It's intended for Sql-2000. Now we need it to be applicable also for Sql-2005, so the module requires some changes, because, as we noticed, sql-2005's replication technology differs from Sql-2000's one.
A few questions to experts, familiar with Merge Replication in SQL-2005:
1. Is it possible to create hybrid replication, with publisher running at SQL-2000 (MSDE) and subscribers running at SQL-2005 Express? Merge publication is not supported in SQL 2005 Express, but some users may require option to use the application at free-of-charge database platform.
2. How deep are changes in merge replication implementation at system level? Is it just modified a bit since SQL-2000, or changed entirely? This knowledge is needed, because the module uses some low-level features (executing system sp's, querying replication-specified tables, etc.). For example, when we tried to create subscription of existing publication in SQL 2005 using the module as is, we found out that sp_addmergepullsubscription_agent doesn't use @encrypted_password parameter anymore, and subscription creation process failed.
3. If anybody has experience using merge replication creation/deletion/detection scripts, generated by SQL 2000, in SQL 2005! Please, tell - what more problems may happen?
Hello everybodyI've got a small system (~20 client machines) connected to one SQL Server2000. Two of these machines refuse to connect to the database. As I don'tknow how the license system is supposed to work, I haven't investigatedtoo much yet.My question is therefore:Will SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition refuse to accept any newconnections when all licenses are used?Is such case, what tool do I use to add more licenses?thanks in advance--Johnny Ljunggren
How do we know our schema changes will propagate to subscriber without breaking the replication? Is there any t-sql command to find out the option true or false?
I have a problem Setting up pull subscription from a publishser to a subscriber , but I could set up Push subscription with out any problem between these two server .. can any one help me out.
I run SQL Server 2000 Enterprise edition.
I get the following error
"Publication 'ProdDB' does not exist. The step failed."
where ProdDB is the publication database from which my Push subscription is running.
Hi, I have two databases on MS. SQL Server 200 the first one is themain DB and the second one is a replica of it, both of them indifferent territories .I connect them using merge replication justwhen I need to merge the data.The problem is when I make import data or export data from anylocation (MS access ,MS SQL server ) to the second one (subscriber DB)or the main DB(publisher and distributor ) ,the imported data doesnot replicated to the other DB ???Normal transaction replicated smoothly.I hope you can help me.Thanks in advance.Mahmoud Khebaisa.
I have some problem about Merge Replication.i'm trying to merge Database A to Database B in local Server. So Database i want publisher contain this:
Because only Data in Table change therefore so i choosed it 100% Snapshot was generated after that ( Problem not a valid window user i already figured out )After that. I created Local Subscription in same Server ( Pull subscriptions and Subscription type: Client ),now problem is throw out."The schema script 'vwBuyADT_513.sch' could not be propagated to the subscriber."
I tried research so many time in Google but any information i found isn't useful for this problem.This problem still can ignore,Synchronization still running. But after 4-5 Hours running..This messages throw out: "The Publisher failed to allocate a new set of identity ranges for the subscription. This can occur when a Publisher or a republishing Subscriber has run out of identity ranges to allocate to its own Subscribers or when an identity column data type does not support an additional identity range allocation"
My question is: Is there anyway solve 2 probem? : 1. "The schema script 'vwBuyADT_513.sch' could not be propagated to the subscriber." 2. "The Publisher failed to allocate a new set of identity ranges for the subscription. This can occur when a Publisher or a republishing Subscriber has run out of identity ranges to allocate to its own Subscribers or when an identity column data type does not support an additional identity range allocation"
I would like to know what alternatives are avaliable to SQL Server Merge Replication. I am also looking for Third Party Tools. Can anyone name a few for me.
I'm working on a replication topology that is completely merge. We have a single consolidated instance (SQL 2005 SP1 Standard) that holds all data and is a continuous push merge publication filtered by region to regional instances (SQL 2005 SP1 Standard). Then we have individual user instances (SQL Express SP1) that pulls from the republished regional instances which is filtered by user. Both publications have Replicate Schema Changes set to true.
I'm testing out changes to tables and sps on a test system I've been using this process:
1-Run Snapshot on the Consolidated instance
2-Verify all published articles have a status of 2 in sysmergearticles
3-Run Regional Snapshot
4-Verify all published articles have a status of 2 in sysmergearticles
5-Run alter table scripts
6-Once all three levels have the table changes, run the alter sp scripts
I've gotten to step 5 and and the changes get replicated to the regional instance just fine however only the existing column changes get replicated to the SQLExpress instance, not the new columns. Looking at the articles in the regional publication it shows the new columns, but they are not selected. I know I can manually select them (or probably write a script that adds them to the publication although sp_repladdcolumn has been depreciated), but isn't there a way to make this a completely automated process since it's just a republished database? Also is the process I'm using the correct one?
I am having problems with my sql merge replication. Whenever a user syncs up to my main database, most of their records are deleted instead of being merged. Or the records on the main database are inserted and it replaces the whole table with the records on the remote laptops. Is there a way to prevent this from happening? Someone please help me.
