Alternate Synchronization Partners
Important
This feature is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. This feature should not be used in new development work. We recommend that you use merge replication in conjunction with database mirroring, rather than alternate synchronization partners. For more information, see Replication and Database Mirroring.
Subscribers to merge publications can synchronize with servers other than the Publisher at which the subscription originated. Synchronizing with alternate partners provides the ability for a Subscriber to synchronize data even if the primary Publisher is unavailable. This feature is also useful when mobile Subscribers have access to a faster or more reliable network connection with an alternate synchronization partner.
The following are requirements when using alternate synchronization partners:
- The feature is available only with merge replication.
- When using automatic identity range handling, a Subscriber must synchronize with its primary Publisher to receive a new identity range.
- To avoid subscription expiration, a Subscriber must synchronize with its primary Publisher within the retention period of the publication. For example, if the publication retention period is 14 days (the default), a Subscriber must synchronize with its primary Publisher at least every 14 days; all other synchronizations can be performed with an alternate synchronization partner.
- The alternate synchronization partner must have the data and schema required by the subscription.
- We recommend that the publication created on the alternate server be a clone of the publication created on the original Publisher.
The following procedures and parameters are relevant for alternate synchronization partners:
- The @allow_synctoalternate parameter of sp_addmergepublication (Transact-SQL)
- sp_addmergealternatepublisher (Transact-SQL) and sp_dropmergealternatepublisher (Transact-SQL)
- The –SyncToAlternate parameter of the Replication Merge Agent
See Also
Concepts
Deprecated Features in SQL Server 2005 Replication