Using Replication Management Objects, SQL Server subscriptions can be synchronized programmatically without using SQL Server Agent or SQL Server Management Studio. Common uses include:
- Express edition subscribers
- Sync from within an application on-demand without an agent job
- Display agent status information in an application
In a previous post I provided a link to a code sample showing how to synchronize a Merge pull subscription in SQL Server Express using RMO. Taking this a step further, for this post I will discuss how to implement a Merge Agent progress bar during synchronous execution, handling the MergeSynchronizationAgent.Status event and displaying the results in a Windows Form.
Synchronously synchronize asynchronously
When using the MergeSynchronizationAgent.Synchronize method to synchronize the Merge Agent it is important to realize that this starts the agent synchronously and control remains with the running agent until it completes. This can make updating UI controls a bit tricky as UI events can be delayed until the Merge Agent finishes synchronizing, which is not very useful. The key to making this work smoothly is to use a BackgroundWorker to synchronize the agent on a separate thread asynchronously and report progress back to the main UI thread when the MergeSynchronization.Status event is raised.
From here the synchronization BackgroundWorker.DoWork event handler can subscribe to the MergeSynchronizationAgent.Status event and start the Merge Agent synchronously for a specified subscription.
Status Event
The MergeSynchronizationAgent.Status event handler reports the Merge Agent progress passing StatusEventArgs PercentCompleted and Message back to the main UI thread which is handled by the synchronization BackgroundWorker.ProgressChanged event handler.
ProgressChanged Event
Finally, the synchronization BackgroundWorker.ProgressChanged event handler smoothly updates the progress bar and text box controls according to the Merge Agent status.
Sample
This code sample can be downloaded from the MSDN Code Gallery:
If you have any questions about the sample, or would like help integrating this into your application, feel free to ping me or leave a comment below.
-Brandon Williams (blog | linkedin | twitter)
