Hi all,
The background = sql2014 publisher, merge replication , 500 SQL Express 2014 subscribers (user laptops).
One publication with roughly 150 articles. The subscription is filtered dynamically by the login of the subscriber, which together with merge filters defines the data partition for each subscriber.
One of the articles includes document data in a filestream column. The requirement is to take this article out of merege replication and have it managed by an alternative mechanism, taking an 'eventual consistency' approach. However we would like to continue managing the schema via merge replication.
I have come across a few posts here and elsewhere that briefly discuss schema-only replication, and based on those I tried :
1) drop the article in question (which also drops a mergefilter definition to this article from its parent table in the hierarchy)
2) readd the article with @subset_filterclase = '0=1' (no rows will qualify at the publisher) and set @subscriber_upload_options = 1 (rows can be changed at subscriber but aren't uploaded)
3) run static snapshot job and sync
There were additional considerations to deal with identity columns and their range management (basically setting the seed to the highest in the system at all nodes)
This seemed to work well initially, but we exposed a problem that occurred when data was moved from one data partition to another, triggering an error :
"Could not find stored procedure 'dbo.MSmerge_expand_sp_4013124408D64B36AA2A6B2E04924D98'"
This missing procedure is actually for the parent table my new schema-only table. I suspect it's a 'precompute' SP.
It seems that in making my config changes, the static snapshot job decides to remove that SP (that's when it disappears), but other 'cogs in the system' seem to expect it to still exist.
So my question is whether it is possible to use merge replication to deliver a schema-only article, if so what am I missing in my actions, what are the definitive steps.
Or is it a case that merge rep is simply not designed to do this.
All insights , suggestions welcome; thanks for reading and for any help!
BTTF