Recreating publications and subscriptions

How to recreate publications and subscriptions in a system where the iBase database was previously enabled for replication and the previous publications and subscriptions are dropped.

About this task

Creating publications for the database that contains the entity and link data is the same regardless of whether the database was previously enabled for replication or not. For detailed information, see Publishing Entity and Link Data.

When recreating subscriptions, you should not need to generate a snapshot that contains the data and schema because the databases should already have all the data. The iBase administrator should have denied database access to all users until replication is reconfigured. The databases have the complete database schema— if there were any schema changes, the iBase administrators applied the changes by using the appropriate iBase utility.

Procedure

  1. Start a new subscription of the required type. The subscription should be as follows:
    OptionDescription
    Publication The database that contains the iBase entity and link data at the Publisher.
    Subscription database The existing entity and link database at the Subscriber.
    Select the following options for the subscription:
    • The Subscriber has the schema and data.
    • The Merge Agent should continuously check for updates.
    • Use the Publisher as a proxy for the Subscriber when resolving conflicts (described as First to Publisher Wins).
    • The subscription is a client subscription type
  2. Test that replication is working correctly for the new subscription. Use one of the user-defined tables:
    1. At the Publisher, in one of the user tables (table names do not start with an underscore), change the data in one of the columns for a row. For a new database, carry out this test on the _GlobalConfiguration table and change the version number but take care to change it back to its original value.
    2. After the change is replicated, check the corresponding table at the Subscriber.
    3. At the Subscriber, change the column back to its original value.
    4. After the change is replicated, check the table at the Publisher. If the Subscriber is supposed to be read-only, and the change is merged at the Publisher, check the setting of the Merge Agent.
    5. If the Subscriber is read-only, change the data at the Publisher back to its initial value.
  3. Set the Merge Agent for the Subscriber to run at the required frequency, for example a polling interval of 1 second.
    For more information, see Merge agent for the entity and link database.
  4. Validate the subscriptions to check that there are no discrepancies between the data at the Publisher and Subscribers. For example, use the Validate All Subscriptions dialog, selecting the option to use both the checksum and rowcount validation methods. For more information, see the Microsoft SQL Server documentation.
  5. Back up the databases.
    For more information, see:
  6. Tell the iBase administrator that the security data at the Subscriber is configured for replication.