Adding a Pull Subscription

A pull subscription is performed while a Subscriber is being administered. A subscription is created by “pulling” in a replica of a publication from a Publisher. With pull subscriptions, the act of publishing is separate from the act of subscribing, and the user administering the Subscriber need not be the same person who administers the Publisher. Only Microsoft® SQL Server™ Subscribers can pull subscriptions using SQL Server Enterprise Manager.

A significant feature of pull subscriptions is that the Distribution Agent for snapshot and transactional publications and the Merge Agent for merge publications all run at the Subscriber. This can result in a reduction of the amount of processing overhead on the Distributor. Another advantage of using pull subscriptions is that members of the sysadmin or db_owner roles at the Subscriber decide which publications are received and when to receive them. For each Subscriber, subscriptions from many Publishers can be set up during one administrative session.

Before you create a pull subscription, you must create a destination database at the Subscriber. You can create a pull subscription to any publication that has been enabled for pull subscriptions on a registered Publisher.

When you create a pull subscription, you set for the Subscriber:

• The name of the destination database for that subscription.
• Whether the Snapshot Agent should create an initial snapshot when the subscription is created.
• Whether the Snapshot Agent runs continuously or on a scheduled basis.
• If a global subscription, the priority of the subscription.
• Whether the Subscriber is visible globally or locally.

To add a pull subscription (snapshot, transactional, or merge)

To add a snapshot or transactional pull subscription

To add a snapshot pull subscription

To add a transactional pull subscription

To add a merge pull subscription