Microsoft KB Archive/268275

= FIX: Transactional ActiveX Pull Subscribers May Expire Even If They Synchronize Within Retention Period =

Article ID: 268275

Article Last Modified on 3/14/2006

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q268275



BUG #: 58133 (SQLBUG_70)



SYMPTOMS
Transactional ActiveX pull subscribers may expire even if they receive changes from the publisher within the maximum distribution retention period. The error message that might occur in Enterprise Manager is:

The subscription has expired and must be initialized at the publisher.



CAUSE
The distribution cleanup process and maximum distribution retention serves two purposes:
 * Cleanup of any transactions that have aged.


 * Picks up any subscriptions that did not receive the preceding transactions and marks them the subscriptions as inactive or expired.

NOTE: The second function is made possible by checking the distribution history of the subscription. In some cases, the ActiveX pull subscribers distribution history might not update accurately. If the ActiveX pull subscriber distribution history does not update accurately an inadvertent expiration of active subscriptions might occur.



WORKAROUND
The xact_seqno column of the distribution..MSdistribution_history table may contain 0x00 if there are not enough entries of distribution history per the execution of the distribution agent (usually if there are less than three entries). You might be able to avoid the problem by sending more numbers of transactions per execution of the distribution agent from the distributor to the subscriber (the number of transactions should be greater than 100 because by default the transactionsperhistory is 100). This causes three or more entries to be logged per each execution of the distribution agent thereby avoiding the problem.



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in SQL Server 7.0. This problem has been corrected in U.S. Service Pack 3 for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

274799 INF: How to Obtain Service Pack 3 for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 and Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) 1.0

For more information, contact your primary support provider.

Additional query words: reinit cleanup subscriptions expire inactive distributor transactions activex pull

Keywords: kbbug kbfix KB268275

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