UPDATED SQL Server 2005 Bug Alert: Data Loss in Merge Replication
A previous DevX article chronicled the data loss that the SQL Server 2005 merge replication engine can cause. Microsoft has since opened an active—although unpublished bug—for it. Find out how this bug manifests itself in real-world scenarios.
by Lizet Pena de Sola
January 11, 2008
he data-loss scenario I described in the DevX article SQL Server 2005 Bug Alert: Merge Replication Could Mean Data Loss (published November 2, 2007) is mainly due to the difference in SQL Server 2005's replication behavior when a publication database uses partition groups versus when the publisher is a SQL Server 2000 Enterprise edition or when the publication doesn't use partition groups. In the publication script example from that article, the parameter responsible for this change in behavior is @use_partition_groups. First introduced in SQL Server 2005, this parameter is meant to optimize replication by using partitions, but two existing bugs related to it opened the door to data loss.
A solution that was suggested in the previous article was to stop using partition groups altogether, as this data loss was an inherent behavior of partition groups design. However, setting the partition groups to false led to a different data-loss scenario, which finally prompted Microsoft to open an active bug (#442076). With this new information, I can explain exactly which SQL Server 2005 setting is causing the data loss.
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he data-loss scenario I described in the DevX article 
