Merge Replication Resync

[Dave B]

I am in the process of proposing a SQL 2005 Merge replication solution to my
company which will allow us to move data to and from various locations around
the world using a Satellite link. One of the scenario that must be dealt with
is the potential loss of the satellite link for an extended amount of time,
however data will still need to be synchronized on a scheduled timeframe.
Getting data from the publisher to the subscriber can be accomplished by
re-snapshotting using the alternate location, however getting the data from
subscriber back to the publisher is the problem. Does any one have a
suggestion on this issue, all advise would be welcome.
--
Dave B

[Hilary Cotter]

Define extended? If its over the retention period (14 days by default but
you can change this) you may have to resend the snapshot. There is an option
to upload subscriber changes before the snapshot is sent. This will protect
your data from being wiped out at the subscriber.

--
Hilary Cotter
Director of Text Mining and Database Strategy
RelevantNOISE.Com - Dedicated to mining blogs for business intelligence.

This posting is my own and doesn't necessarily represent RelevantNoise's
positions, strategies or opinions.

Looking for a SQL Server replication book?
http://www.nwsu.com/0974973602.html

Looking for a FAQ on Indexing Services/SQL FTS
http://www.indexserverfaq.com

"Dave B" <Da...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:8B023940-1208-4B12...@microsoft.com...

[Dave B]

Hilary:

Thanks for the quick response. By extended I mean more then a month and
unfortunately I will need to get the data to and from the subscriber on a
weekly basis. I know I can resync the snapshot from the publisher to the
subscriber and send it by CD, but I need to get the data from the subscriber
back t the publisher. I was thinking maybe I back up the subscription db
before applying the new snapshot then restoring the back on the publish
server and attempting to push the data to the publisher. Do you have any
suggestion?
--
Dave B

[Hilary Cotter]

A month will only work if there is not a lot of changes between syncs,
otherwise the syncs will be lengthy. Even if the subscription expires you
still have the option to upload subscriber changes before sending down the
snapshot.

So I don't think you need to restore the subscriber db on the publisher and
attempt to do a local reconciliation there.

--
Hilary Cotter
Director of Text Mining and Database Strategy
RelevantNOISE.Com - Dedicated to mining blogs for business intelligence.

This posting is my own and doesn't necessarily represent RelevantNoise's
positions, strategies or opinions.

Looking for a SQL Server replication book?
http://www.nwsu.com/0974973602.html

Looking for a FAQ on Indexing Services/SQL FTS
http://www.indexserverfaq.com

"Dave B" <Da...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:944A51DE-4734-46AC...@microsoft.com...

[Dave B]

Hilary:

Maybe I am not explaining myself properly. I have to resync the data between
publisher and subscriber on a weekly basis, regardless if I have a satellite
connection or not, this is a deal breaker. I need to develop a protocol to
sync the data between subscriber and publisher in the event I lose the normal
transportation link. So I was planning on using CD's to transport a new
snapshot to the subscriber and then restoring a backup of the subscriber db,
created just prior to the resync with the CD'd snapshot from the publisher,
to a location on the publishing server so data from the subscriber could be
replicated to the publisher. I guess what I am asking is, can a merge
replication be resynced if the default transportation link (satellite, LAN,
etc.) is down and the data must be replicated on schedule, waiting is not an
option?

[Hilary Cotter]

Not easily. What you can do is use backup the subscriber send it to the
publisher and then manually figure out what has changed between syncs by
querying sysarticles for the latest generation per article, and then
msmergecontents and msmerge_tombstone to figure out which rows correspond to
the generation IDs for the articles and manually merge them. It would be
pretty significant hacking to do this.

But out of the box there is no way. The publisher and subscriber must
contact each other to do ths sync.

--
Hilary Cotter
Director of Text Mining and Database Strategy
RelevantNOISE.Com - Dedicated to mining blogs for business intelligence.

This posting is my own and doesn't necessarily represent RelevantNoise's
positions, strategies or opinions.

Looking for a SQL Server replication book?
http://www.nwsu.com/0974973602.html

Looking for a FAQ on Indexing Services/SQL FTS
http://www.indexserverfaq.com

"Dave B" <Da...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

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