Hi,
We have Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP1 based merge replication application. This system consist of 1 publisher/distributor and about 700 subscribers. Publisher is MS SQL Server 2005 standard SP1 and subscribers are mostly MS SQL Server Express SP1s.
We started this system in September last year with migrating data as region based with one area at time. Everything went well until January 2007 when over 500 users were using new system. What is even strange that most errors comes on areas which were moved to new system on week number 2 on 2007 (8.1.2007->)
I have double and cross checked that these publications have exact the same parameteters as working publications.
The error message which comes on subscriber is following:
The Merge Agent failed after detecting that retention-based metadata cleanup has deleted metadata at the Subscriber for changes not yet sent to the Publisher. You must reinitialize the subscription (without upload). (Source: MSSQL_REPL, Error number: MSSQL_REPL-2147199401) Get help: http://help/MSSQL_REPL-2147199401
When this error comes client subscription should not be expired yet. So subscription is expiring incorrectly earlier than expected. After reinit subcriber can syncronize without any errors. For now machines suffering of this error have been different machines so there is no certain information if this error is repeatable on same machine.
Real bad thing is that if user has't syncronized in regular basis there is possibility to that data may be lost because the reinit must be done without upload as error message says.
Regards,
Jouko
We have now installed SP2 to over 650 machines and we are still getting this error. So it seems obvious that SP2 do NOT fix this error. We have now open second time support case to Microsoft about this issue. First time we got answer to apply SP2 to all machines that are involved with replication.
Jouko
