reinitialise transactional replication without dropping subscriber table 2008R2 - sql

Normally when we reinitialise transactional replication it drops the table on the subscriber and recreates it. I want to have a clustered PK on the source database with a non-clustered PK of the same column on the destination and a different clustered index. I understand I can achieve this by temporarily stopping the replication making the changes and enabling it again.
I'm more worried about the future if we ever need to reinitialise I don't want the table to be dropped and lose our different index strategy. I might be being blind but I can't find a setting to allow the table structure on the subscriber to be kept on reinitialisation.

I found the answer. You set this in the article properties of the replication. You can choose to truncate all data if the table already exists.

Related

Create index in huge MariaDB production database without table locking

I have a table with 202M records where I need to add a few indexes and I can't find it anywhere (or maybe I don't understand the lingo) if that is possible to do, without locking, in MariaDB 10.3.
I found this post where I can see that that is possible in MySQL 5.6+, but my google foo didn't get my any info on MariaDB.
I tried using pt-online-schema-change but since I don't have any index (not even primary) that is not an option.
This is possible with the use of ALTER ONLINE TABLE.
ALTER ONLINE TABLE is equivalent to LOCK=NONE. Therefore, the ALTER
ONLINE TABLE statement can be used to ensure that your ALTER TABLE
operation allows all concurrent DML.
Further reading tells that adding primary keys is a "copy" operation as DB engine needs to copy the whole table to new file, but adding other indexes in an inplace operation.
InnoDB supports adding a primary key to a table with ALGORITHM set to
INPLACE. The table is rebuilt, which means that all of the data is
reorganized substantially, and the indexes are rebuilt. As a result,
the operation is quite expensive. This operation supports the
non-locking strategy. This strategy can be explicitly chosen by
setting the LOCK clause to NONE. When this strategy is used, all
concurrent DML is permitted.
InnoDB supports adding a plain index to a table with ALGORITHM set to
INPLACE. The table is not rebuilt. This operation supports the
non-locking strategy. This strategy can be explicitly chosen by
setting the LOCK clause to NONE. When this strategy is used, all
concurrent DML is permitted.
More info in MariaDB documentation.

Database Replication after Data Load

I'm trying to understand the ramifications of database replication (SQL Server or Golden Gate) for situations where the source database is completely repopulated every night. To clarify, all existing tables are dropped and then the database is reloaded with new tables using same name along with all the data.
Based on my understanding i.e. that replication uses a transaction log... I would assume it will also repeat the process of dropping the tables instead of identifying the differences and just adding the new data. Is that correct?
You can set up the replication using OracleGoldenGate so that it will be doing what you want it to do.
the TRUNCATE TABLE command can be replicated or it can be ignored
the populating of the source table (INSERT/bulk operations) can be replicated or it can be ignored
if a row already exists (meaning a row with the same PK exists) on the target and you INSERT it on the source you can either UPDATE the target or DELETE the old one and INSERT the new, or ignore it
Database replication is based on the redo (transaction) log. Only particular events that appear on the source databases, which are logged can be replicated. But the whole replication engine can make some additional transformations as it is replicating the changes.

Database replication stops if data is changed on the subscriber

Should the SQL database replication stop if i delete one record in a replicated table on the subscriber end?
I remember having a replication running where the delete on subscriber would be overwritten from publisher effectively preventing you from deleting the data.
But in our new configuration it crashed the replication when we deleted one record.
It depends. If you deleted a row at the subscriber that is subsequently updated at the publisher, replication will break when the update is propagated. Why is this? If you look at how the command is replicated, it calls a stored procedure with the PK column(s), a bit mask of what columns changed, and then the list of new values for columns that changed (I'm glossing over some detail, but you can look for yourself in the subscriber database; the procedures are all there and pretty accessible). Because it doesn't re-replicate the whole row again, if it doesn't find the row indicated by the PK, replication assumes (correctly) that the subscriber is no longer in sync with the publisher and stops. As far as I know, replication has never worked in the way you describe.
TL;DR: you should treat the subscriber database(s) as read-only except by the replication process itself.

Replication in SQL Server 2008 R2 if Source and Destination Tables indexes are different

To fine tune the performance of overall system, I was checking the existing table's Indexes and found that we are using a ErrorLog table which is hit(for writing warnings and errors) for millions of transactions everyday. As we have indexes(on datetime) on this kind of table I thought this logging will definitely takes longer than the logging in to table without any indexes.
The whole indexing on CreateDateTime is used only by Developers for querying the table for troubleshooting in Production environment. Is it possible to take out index on the primary production server and have index only for the table in secondary(backup) db server. As we are doing replication on secondary server data is always in Sysc.
To Sync both the tables via replication, do we need to have same indexes on both tables?
Assuming transactional replication, there is nothing saying that the indexes have to be the same between the publisher and the subscriber. The only thing that you need to keep is the primary key as that's how replication identifies what row(s) on the subscriber need to be affected by a given statement at the publisher.

Replication - Explicit value must be specified for identity column in table

I'm using Merge Replication. The Identity range management is AUTOMATIC
I HAVE A TRIGGER ON COMPANIES TABLE WHICH INSERTS ROWS IN SERIALNUMBERSCHEME TABLE which has documentID as identity column
While synchronizing I'm getting below error
A row insert at 'SERVER\MUMBAI.PROD_SUB' could not be propagated to 'SERVER\NEWYORK.PROD'. This failure can be caused by a constraint violation. Explicit value must be specified for identity column in table 'SerialNumberScheme' either when IDENTITY_INSERT is set to ON or when a replication user is inserting into a NOT FOR REPLICATION identity column.
Data is inserted properly at subscriber but not replicated at publisher
Any solution/suggesstion?
Sounds like your trigger gets fired when the replication agent applies the updates. Normally the trigger should run only at the publisher (or more precisely, at the site which inserts the original data). Then replication will replicate the effect of the trigger. I think that all you need is to mark the trigger as NOT FOR REPLICATION.
See Controlling Constraints, Identities, and Triggers with NOT FOR REPLICATION.