sql server replication: Hello All,

I need some advice regarding changes to merge publications.

We have an application with a SQL Server 2000 database that is the
publlisher and many SQL Server CE databases that are subscribers. The
application on the handheld keeps a daily log of activity so there are
quite a large number of inserts at the subscriber. The subscribers
also pull down locations and other info for which they must respond -
which causes these people to perform activities.

Now, as our application evolves, we make changes. We add new
functionality and we make bug fixes. Sometimes that results in schema
changes or merge filter changes. These result in subcription
reinitialization which means the subscribers lose their daily
activity.

How are other people dealing with this? We have tried telling people
to synchronize and get their data in before the changes happen but
invariably several people do not. Also, it takes us an inordinate
amount of time to get changes into our production environment.

Also, does anybody know of a way to get the data out of a CE sdf
database on a desktop so we could use it to recover in these cases?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Hi Michael,

It seems that some users do not synchronize and upload the data before the
changes happen. This situation is terrible. Based on my experience, the
data will be lost. There is not a recommended method to synchronize the
data automatically with replication. Generally, if we can find the lost
data, we can only insert them into the publication manually.

I searched a lot on the web and wanted to find a tool to get the data out
of the sdf file. Unfortunately, I was unable to find such a tool. However,
I think it is possible to transform the data from the sdf file to desktop
via programming.

Thanks for using MSDN newsgroup.

Regards,

Michael Shao
Microsoft Online Partner Support
Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "as is" with no warranties and confers no rights.

Thanks for the response Michael.

This is very unfortunate. It seems that merge replication is not well
suited to applications that are not 100% stable and have a large
number of clients that push changes back to the publisher.

Another post in sqlserver.ce reads:

There is currently no way to open a SQL Server CE database on the
desktop. This is a common request, and is being evaluated for future
versions of SQL Server CE. Some customers have reported successfully
using the emulator running on a desktop as a workaround.
The easiest way to bring down the data from SQL Server is to use
Replication or RDA. Please check the connectivity sections of the
Books Online, or any of the samples that use connectivity.

So I guess I will write another application that uses RDA to pump the
tables to the server so I can manipulate them from there.

On Mon, 03 Nov 2003 12:38:15 GMT, v-yshao@online.microsoft.com
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