Curious data loss

  • Hi,

    On one of our preproduction systems, we have transactional replication setup that pushes data from the main (publisher) database to the reporting (subscriber) database. The databases are fairly large (35+ gb) with several tables in the hundred millions of records.

    A few days ago the reports database died a horrible death and of course, no up-to-date backups of that database (I know, I know, still waiting for those drives...) so I restored a much older backup.

    Once I reset the replication (pull subscription, distributor on the report db server) by disabling and re-enabling replication on both servers, I noticed that some records on the publisher changed and others were removed!

    This publication is Transactional, not Merge nor with updatable subscriptions. Is it possible that an older snapshot of the publisher db causes records from the subscriber to be pushed back to the publisher? Sounds weird but is it possible?

    Anyway, nothing to do but push IT to add those backup drives for me....

    Thanks for any advice.

  • I had a similar issue of missing-at-the-publisher records but I am still investigating ....

    If you have found anything, can you please let us know


    * Noel

  • We are having the same issue. A friend from another company told me they had the same issue and found it was their backup software. They were using Veritas/Symantec Backup Exec. They were backing up all of SQL server's enviroment. They changed it to only backup the backup files directory and this fixed it for them. I have not had time to reach this or try it in our enviroment.

  • I believe in my case it is an SQL Server Bug because it never happens unless there is a big tracsaction coliding with index manipulations.


    * Noel

  • I'm gonna agree with you on it being a transactional bug. As the publisher database does get hit by our qa pretty heavily and those boxes don't have any service packs yet (I know, I know, working on it) I assume the snapshot loses something while getting pushed to the distributor?

    In any case, I went back to my study guides and reviewed them in case I missed a step but my steps are 'by the book' if you will, so I can only assume BUG. :blink:

  • http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916706/en-us


    * Noel

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