Merge replication does not working as expected.

Hi,
I am writing again because I've now confirmed that merge
replication does not work in my case. I'll try to
describe my case in a detailed way, as I need to find the
solution (fix) for this.
I have two servers. One main server A, and one subserver
B (there will be more of subservers).
Server B is receiving data from various applications in a
very irregular way. The data are then supposed to be
moved to server A (moved, not copied).
Server A is Publisher and its own Distributor. Server B
is Subscriber. Subscription is "pull" and "anonymous".
The merge replication with filtering is used. The filter
clause indicates a condition impossible. Thanks to this,
following scenario occurs:
- no rows are initiallyu copied from A server to B,
because A has no rows that fulfill the impossible
condition.
- when there are some rows added on B, when
synchronization occurs, the rows are copied from B to A.
Then all rows received on A are checked against the
impossible filter - because none of it satisfies that
condition, all are deleted on B server.
This works OK when the data are inserted on B "outside"
the replication phase.
But when you will insert the data to B when the
replication is in progress, the merge replication (and
subsequent replications) will fail to clear all the rows
on B, and as a result, table on B will stil have some
records from previous replications (all records are
copied, but not all are deleted). I consider this
behaviour as a bug in sql server replication, as I think
that it should be consistent in all situations.
The best way to reproduce this is to create a stored
procedure that inserts for example 10000 records to B,
and run this procedure few seconds before the start of
replication.
I hope that I gave you some light on the subject. I hope
that there are some MS guys related to replication, and
maybe one of them will be able to help me with this (you
can write directly if you need detailed information).
I'll appreciate any help.
Best regards,
Krzysztof Kruszynski
Paul,
Thanks for the link.
When I was reproducing the issue, I found that sometimes I was unable to disturb the first replication. But the seubsequent runs gave me allways some abandoned rows.
Regards,
Krzysztof
"Paul Ibison" wrote:

> Krzysztof,
> I'll try to repro this sometime later this week. Just as
> an aside, as you want to target your newsgroup comment to
> Microsoft, you can use this interface:
> http://communities2.microsoft.com/co.../newsgroups/en
> -us/default.aspx?
> dg=microsoft.public.sqlserver.replication&cat=en-us-
> servers-sqlserver&lang=en&cr=US
> This newsgroup webpage allows you to categorise/filter
> your queries.
> Regards,
> Paul Ibison
>
|||Krzysztof,
yes I can replicate your error. Subsequently doing a dummy
update on the subscriber still didn't ultimately remove
the row from the subscriber. The only way I could resolve
it was to reinitialize, which sounds drastic, but in this
case it merely readds the empty table but resets the
incorrect generation numbers. I'm not on sp3a on this
site, but if you can reproduce it on sp3a, I'd log this
with MS as a bug. Anyway, to resolve your issue, you could
resort to DTS - after all what you are doing is
essentially bypassing normal replication procedures, or
you could reinitialize frequently.
HTH,
Paul Ibison
|||Hi Paul

> I'm not on sp3a on this site, but if you can reproduce
> it on sp3a, I'd log this with MS as a bug.
I'll try to apply the sp3a and let you know about the results. But I don't know where to log it as a bug (or you will log it?).

> Anyway, to resolve your issue, you could
> resort to DTS - after all what you are doing is
> essentially bypassing normal replication procedures
Yep - I know. and I will probably use DTS or something else, not the replication.
Thanks for your help,
Krzysztof
|||You could post it on the feedback area
(http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp).
Alternatively you could repost it here FAO Microsoft.
Alternatively a MVP (Hilary?) who sees this might have
some special powers to raise it directly with MS. Probably
just leaving it as it is will be sufficient as these
newsgroups are monitored by MS staff as a matter of course.
Regards,
Paul Ibison