Technical Blog

Wish List: SQL Server Replication

A list of improvements we'd make to SQL Server replication given the chance

Phil Grayson

Published

I’ve worked on a few systems 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.
  • Vote | Increase the 2GB compression limit for snapshots
    • Maybe compress each article rather than the whole snapshot.
  • Reduce \ eliminate locking when creating snapshots.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 an SSMS plug-in.

Get Started With

Start Now
icon_bluestone98