Wish List: SQL Server Replication
Here's a list of improvements we'd make to SQL Server replication given the chance

Phil Grayson
Published Jun 2017
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I’ve worked on a few system that use replication and the same issues tend to crop up. There’s a discussion on SQL Server Central about what needs to be improved, so I thought I’d share my experiences
- Better default indexes (See blog)
- Vote | Improve replication latency monitoring (built-in canary tables).
- Vote | QueryStore for distribution databases
- Fix the silent fail issue where replication can timeout and fail to create tables or insert \ delete SPs.
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Vote | Increase the 2GB compression limit for snapshots
- Maybe compress each article rather than the whole snapshot.
- Reduce \ eliminate locking when creating snapshot.
- Why is the compatibility level of the distribution database 2005?
- Ability to create pull subscription jobs on Web edition (here’s my scripts)
- Ability to synchronise the indexes between the publisher and the subscriber. So new indexes and changes are automatically replicated out.
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Improved logging and diagnostics for errors.
- Better ability to see command information.
- Ability to analyse the transactions per object (possible with scripts) to help identify tables that are being updated too often and causing unnecessary strain.
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Vote | Ability to optimise the order of the snapshot (inspect the dependency and reorder using sp_changearticle and sp_changemergearticle).
- Through Aireforge we’ve written but not released something that does this. If people are interested, let us know and create a SSMS plug-in.

Phil Grayson
Published Jun 2017
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