Replication question

Dear Sir/Madam,
I am replicating 5 tables from Server A to Server B. On my first setting, I
included those 5 tables on a single publisher. After that, I recognize when a
table schema changes, I needed to drop and re-create the publishication,
means all 5 tables needed to re-synchronize again, is that true? Will it be
better to create 5 different publishication with each for one table only, so
during recreate publishication, only one table needed to synchronize, more
flexible? What the disadvantage for that?
Another question is, during recreate of one publishication, what is the
sequence of action? Is that stop log reader first, then recreate the one of
the publishication, generate snapshot, distribute the snapshot and finially
restart the log reader? Would this action sequence can make sure the
synchonize of those 5 tables?
Waiting to hearing from you soon. Many thanks!
Yours sincerely,
Henry
I would use sp_repladdcolumn or sp_repldropcolumn for this. SQL 20005 has
better options to replication schema changes seemelessly, otherwise if you
have a lot of changes to our schema you might want to think about log
shipping.
Splitting each article out into a seperate publication is a good idea when
sp_repladdcolumn and sp_repldropcolumn can't do the changes you are
looking for - for instance modifiying pk's. It is also a good idea when
your tables are large as if your snapshot fails on one table you will have
to replicate all tables again.
In general you shoudl group your tables into their own publications by DRI.
The way replication works is that the publication tables are locked and
then the log reader agent starts. Users can't make changes to tables until
the data is bcp'd out. Then when the data is bcp'd out the lock is
released and users changes are written to the tlog (as always) and the log
reader will read the transactions in the log and build commands to
replicate these transactions to the subscriber.
This way all the transactions are replicated and nothing is missed.
Hilary Cotter
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