http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2647118

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2310152

Zen4Sync is all about providing an Orchestration and Load Test platform able to validate any SQL Server Merge Replication based Architecture. http://zen4sync.codeplex.com/

When setting up merge replication on your SQL 2008 + server, please be careful with the parameter STREAM_BLOB_COLUMN. By default, this option is set to FALSE, as explained here in BOL: [ @stream_blob_columns= ] 'stream_blob_columns' Specifies that a data stream optimization be used when replicating...

Problem: If sql_variant column includes a value with new datetime type, the value is replicated as base type nvarchar even if schema option 0x200000000 is not set during the application of the SNAPSHOT (only). After the snapshot has been applied, if you execute the command to verify the property...

Problem : Consider the following scenario: You use a merge publication operation to replicate XML data in Microsoft SQL Server 2005, in Microsoft SQL Server 2008, or in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. A foreign key violation error occurs in the same merge replication batch. In this scenario...

Database Compatibility Mode : Compatibility level affects behaviors only for the specified database , not for the entire server. Compatibility level provides only partial backward compatibility with earlier versions of SQL Server. Use compatibility level as an interim migration aid to work around...

Problem : While running the snapshot agent, the available memory of the server goes down to 0 and snapshot may even fail. Should the snapshot complete, the memory is released very slowly. Cause : This is because in the current design (SQL 2005 and higher), snapshot agent uses SNAC BCP provider...

Problem : Error " You can only specify the READPAST lock in the READ COMMITTED or REPEATABLE READ isolation levels " generated when altering published table columns in a transactional replication. Cause : Unable to alter columns on Published database if using any isolation level besides...

Problem : Publisher: SQL Server 2008 Subscriber: SQL Server Compact 3.5 Merge Replication Performance issue when using keep_partition_changes or precomputed partitions Cause : There could be many causes to this and analysis would have to be done however sometimes it may be...

One problem that is hard to resolve / understand is fake conflicts within a merge replication topology. Looking at a scenario in which fake conflicts were occurring, we saw that following: Our affected subscriber is synchronizing with 2 publications that have retention=14. The publisher also...

Seems like there was an issue with the comments for this blog - I wasn’t getting notified and hence never got to respond. My apologies to all those that commented and never got a reply. If you do have a comment, please do not hesitate to e-mail me by selecting "e-mail Blog Author" Thanks...

PROBLEM : I have a SQL Server 2005 replicating with an Oracle 11 subscriber. After installing the OLEDB driver for Oracle 11, a minidump is created every time the distributor tries to connect to Oracle: Distrib.exe crashes with STACK_OVERFLOW exception. The issue occurs while initializing the...

Problem : I have a transactional replication topology that consists of SQL 2005 and SQL 2000. I managed to generate the snapshot but when I try to apply it on the subscribers, I get the following error: Error number 20598: " The row was not found at the Subscriber when applying the replicated...

Problem : The upload message to be sent to Publisher 'XXX' is being generated The merge process is using Exchange ID 'XXXXX' for this web synchronization session. No data needed to be merged. Request message generated, now making it ready for upload. Upload request size is 1024 bytes....

Problem : I have set up a Transactional Replication with Updatable Subscribers on my SQL 2005 server and created user triggers on the Publisher database. These triggers have been configured with “not for replication”. I update my subscriber and the changes are propagated onto the publisher...

I have come across this interesting issue in which we have the following scenario: Merge Replication All servers are running SQL 2008 When merge replication is processing certain published articles, we see that the merge agent is blocked, and is being blocked by another spid executing another...

Problem : Consider the following scenario: You add a new article(s) to an existing publication in your merge replication environment and Your merge agent uses '-ParallelUploadDownload' parameter with a value of 1 for synchronization. Note: Merge Agent profile High Volume Server-to-Server...

Problem : I create a SQL Server 2005 replication topology on my Windows 2003 server. Everything synchronizes fine. I then go and add a default constraint to an article. Subscriber is synchronized and the default constraint is propagated to the subscriber. Subscriber is marked for reinit with...

Problem : My snapshot agent fails to create a dynamic snapshot for a subscriber in my Merge replication environment. Each subscriber is supposed to receive the snapshot based on their login account. Each account is explicitly added to a group which is defined in the PAL .However the agent fails with...

A lot of users have wondered about the performance latency transactional replication suffers over WAN. After analyzing / discussing this within the teams, here are the main points one should take into consideration when deciding / testing this type of implementation: Should you notice performance...

“Could not find stored procedure MSMERGE_INS/UPD/DEL_SP_XXXXXXXXXX” If you have replication set up on a SQL Server 2005 (any build post SP2) or SQL 2008, and you receive a similar error as the one mentioned above, there is a way to resolve this issue without having to reinitialize / drop - create...

I noticed that many people overlook optimizing their filters in a merge replication topology. This is crucial to performance and attempting to tweak the replication itself (example: using pre-computed partitions) may not be sufficient. An example of such: All the join filters specified against...

Repro : ** note: if you will be trying this repro – please remember to alter the script to suit your environment (Example: @web_synchronization_url) ** SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO SET ANSI_PADDING ON GO CREATE TABLE [dbo].[tbl_Thisisareallylongtablenametoemphisetheissue]( ...

Problem : SQL Server 2005: I have created a database that contains various file groups and assigned the new data files to their respective file group. I also created a partition function and partition scheme (using the file groups created). I then created a transactional publication in which...