Breaking Changes in SQL Server Replication

This topic describes breaking changes in SQL Server Replication. These changes might break applications, scripts, or functionalities that are based on earlier versions of SQL Server. You might encounter these issues when you upgrade. For more information, see Use Upgrade Advisor to Prepare for Upgrades.

Breaking Changes Made in SQL Server 2012

Updatable subscriptions including immediate updating and queued updating with snapshot and transactional publications are discontinued.

Breaking Changes Made in SQL Server 2008

This section describes breaking changes in replication features that were made in SQL Server 2008.

Breaking Changes for Transactional Replication

The following breaking changes apply to transactional replication.

Feature

Description

Initializing a transactional subscription from a backup

To initialize a subscription from a backup in SQL Server 2008, a user must be a member of the dbcreator server role. In SQL Server 2005, membership in the db_owner database role was sufficient.

For more information about how to initialize a subscription from a backup, see Initialize a Transactional Subscription Without a Snapshot.

Breaking Changes for Merge Replication

The following breaking changes apply to merge replication.

Feature

Description

New identity ranges assigned

For tables that use automatic identity range management, replication might assign new identity ranges during upgrade. If any tables have a larger identity range assigned to the Subscriber than to the Publisher, replication assigns a range to the Publisher equal to that of the Subscriber.

To determine ranges being used for each article, execute sp_helpmergearticle in the publication database and check the pub_identity_range and identity_range columns.

See Also

Concepts

Replication Backward Compatibility