Replication Changes in SQL Server 2008 (CTP6): The
Replication Monitor
I've recently started spending a bit of time with CTP6 of
SQL Server 2008 and was obviously interested to see what changes have been made
to the replication engine. When SQL Server 2005 came out I did the same to see
how much had changed from SQL 2000 and in that case the replication monitor had
changed massively, the engine catered for peer-to-peer transactional
replication, there was oracle publishing and merge over https. In fact there
were many other changes there which all together made it an interesting time
trying to get on top of the new technologies. Now the dust has settled and we
already have another new release going to SQL Server 2008, but I must say my
first impressions are that it is a fine-tuning and refining of the existing SQL
2005 replication technology rather than anything earth-shattering. In this first
article I'll show some of the changes made to the replication monitor that I've
looked into and which might prove useful. This is all pretty lightweight but in
the next article will look at the more technical changes made to peer-to-peer
replication.
Sorting and Filtering
The new replication monitor and right-click menu is shown
below, with the main changes highlighted in red. For myself the replication
installations I've administered have always been pretty small, so these new
sorting and filtering options aren't such a big deal. However from the
newsgroups I know of some shops where they have hundreds of subscribers,
especially in the case of remote merge sites, and these guys have been asking
for this type of functionality for a while. So, let's go through the new bells
and whistles...
For most tabs in the replication monitor you can sort the rows. Clicking on the
row header directly will still produce a triangle showing which column is used
for the sort. Right-clicking on the grid opens a new menu which again gives the
option to sort by a single column. However there is now also the possibility of
sorting by multiple columns. This menu is also used to clear the sort.
To activate the filtering, you again use a right-click. The filtering allows you
to focus on those subscriptions in a particular area or those having the largest
latency or the lowest performance etc. For most columns in the grid the data
type being used in the filter is obvious e.g. "Latency" is going to be "hh:mm:ss".
In the case of tracer tokens it is a little more ambiguous because the column
contains both text and time items:
Currently in CTP6 there is no way to deal with the
"Pending..." string, because the filter condition only caters for "hh:mm:ss". I
hope this changes on the RTM and I've raised a Connect item listing this as a
suggested change.
Anyway, once the filter is initiated, it is in place until you right-click and
select to "Clear Filter..." or close the replication monitor. So, beware that
you might not be looking at the complete picture if a colleague has set up a
filter on a remote desktop SQL installation! In fact my previous Connect item
suggests that there be some sort of indicator showing that the filter is in
place, apart from relying on a right-click to verify.
Agents and Warnings
In SQL Server 2005 the Agents and Warnings were combined
together onto one tab.
In SQL Server 2008 these have now been separated into 2
tabs (below). This is neater as Agents and Warnings are essentially two
different classes of administration. Usually I set up the warnings once and
after that I don't really need to go there again, so this allows me to
concentrate on monitoring just the agents.
The Publisher's Node - Common Jobs and Agents
Finally in SQL Server 2005 (below) if we select the
publisher node on the LHS and want to get details of relevant processes, we just
have access to the "Common Jobs" tab which lists the maintenance jobs for
replication. The "Subscription Watch List" lets us look at the synchronization
agents for all publications but we can't see the other agents globally ie the
snapshot, log reader and queue reader agents. For those agents we have to drill
down into each publication separately. This is a bit of a pain because in SQL
Server 2000 looking at the agents centrally was quite straightforward.
So, in SQL Server 2008 we can now look at the publisher
agents all together. The "Common Jobs" tab has become the "Agents" tab. Slightly
unintuitive as it includes the maintenance jobs which I've never considered to
be an "Agent" but despite this, it is a big move forward in terms of centralized
administration and ease of use.
Summary
This article shows that the replication interface has
undergone some useful changes. In the next article I'll concentrate more on the
technological changes, focussing on the peer-to-peer modifications.
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