Hi,
I'm trying to get clarification on the technical difference between running the snapshot agent and marking a subscription for re-initialisation with a new snapshot.
In particular, I am interested in the implementation of the "action if name is in use" property of the articles. We have the default of drop and recreate.
A colleague has suggested that taking a new snapshot synchronizes the schema and all changes from publisher and subscriber are merged without any risk of data loss. However, I have read documentation (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ms152466.aspx) that states creating a snapshot overwrites data at the subscriber with the contents of the publisher.
When the merge agent applies the snapshot, is the value of "action if name is in use" taken into consideration or is this only done during re-initialisation?
Many thanks,
Paul