Attachable Subscriptions
Important
This feature is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. This feature should not be used in new development work. For merge publications that are partitioned using parameterized filters, we recommend using the new features of partitioned snapshots, which simplify the initialization of a large number of subscriptions. For more information, see Snapshots for Merge Publications with Parameterized Filters. For publications that are not partitioned, you can initialize a subscription with a backup. For more information, see Initializing a Merge Subscription Without a Snapshot and Initializing a Transactional Subscription Without a Snapshot.
The attachable subscription databases feature allows you to transfer a database with published data and pull subscriptions from one Subscriber to another. After the database is attached to the new Subscriber, the database at the new Subscriber will automatically receive pull subscriptions to the publications.
Configuring an attachable subscription database requires the following steps:
- Configure a publication to allow copying.
- Copy the subscription database.
- Transfer and attach the subscription database to a new Subscriber.
- Configure an agent job for each subscription at the Subscriber.
- Associate each subscription with a publication at the Publisher.
- Run the Distribution Agent or Merge Agent at the Subscriber for each subscription.
Subscription databases copied and attached to other Subscribers can contain multiple pull subscriptions for multiple publications using snapshot replication, transactional replication, or merge replication. Attachable Subscription databases are not available with push subscriptions and are not compatible with non-Microsoft SQL Server databases.
The following procedures and parameters are relevant for attachable subscriptions:
- The @allow_subscription_copy parameter of sp_addpublication (Transact-SQL) or sp_addmergepublication (Transact-SQL)
- sp_copysubscription (Transact-SQL)
- sp_attachsubscription (Transact-SQL)
- sp_addpullsubscription_agent (Transact-SQL) or sp_addmergepullsubscription_agent (Transact-SQL)
- sp_addsubscription (Transact-SQL) or sp_addmergesubscription (Transact-SQL)
- Replication Distribution Agent or Replication Merge Agent
See Also
Concepts
Deprecated Features in SQL Server 2005 Replication