BUG: Slow Synchronization on Newly Added Subscriptions to Statically Filtered Publications

ID: Q246332

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft SQL Server version 7.0

BUG #: 56713 (SQLBUG_70)

SYMPTOMS

When a new subscriber is added to a statically filtered publication, the initial merge process should just bulk copy (BCP) the user tables and merge system tables into the subscriber. However, under certain conditions, you may see that the initial merge process takes a long time. The trace files may indicate that the rows from the merge system tables like MSmerge_contents and MSmerge_tombstone are processed although they have already been copied through BCP.

CAUSE

If a new subscriber is added to an existing publication and the new subscriber is added to the publication after the retention period for subscriptions, the merge agent processes statically filtered publications as though they were dynamically filtered publications. The default retention period for subscriptions is 60 days. After the retention period the rows in the MSmerge_genhistory table on the publisher are aged and removed resulting in an erroneous call to sp_MSinitdynamicsubscription and poor performance of the merge job.

WORKAROUND

Follow these steps to work around this behavior:

Unsubscribe all the subscriptions to the publication.

Unpublish the publication.

Mark the published database as unpublished with this code:
```
sp_replicationdboption 'publisheddbname','merge publish',false 
```
The preceding code removes the merge system tables.

Republish.

Resubscribe.

Setting the retention period using the @retention value in the sp_addmergepublication for the subscription expire to be a higher value only delays the manifestation of the problem.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in SQL Server version 7.0.

Additional query words: static, dynamic, merge, filters, performance, subscriber

Keywords : kbSQLServ700bug
Version : winnt:7.0
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbbug