September 5, 2016 at 1:48 am
I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft tries to replace replication with some flavor of Always On at some point. The efforts made to improve replication have been few and far between across the years. It seems that there are really only substantial improvements every 3 versions.
However, I have not seen anything publicly stated that replication is deprecated or being discontinued. I seriously doubt they will remove it because quite a few people use the feature and Microsoft is very hesitant to remove any features that customers use. This is why we still have sp_who and Profiler.
September 12, 2016 at 4:44 pm
Maybe I am getting my terminology mixed up. The article mentions that replication between 2008 and 2016 is unsupported. This under the heading of "Items Deprecated in SQL Server 2016." I thought that deprecated means still functional , but discouraged. Thus the statement in the article of " SQL Server 2016 does not support replication to or from SQL Server 2008 ... " mean
a) May not work properly?
b) Definitely will not work properly?
c) Will work properly for now but not in the future ?
I am thinking the answer is b, but that answer c would be the better definition to apply the term 'deprecate' to.
----------------------------------------------------
September 13, 2016 at 12:08 pm
Deprecated means this works, but no work is being done on the feature (outside of security/bug fixes) and this will be removed from the product at some point.
In terms of unsupported, this means that Microsoft will not help you if the feature does not work. You can try to replicate to/from SQL 2008, but if there are errors or problems, you are out of luck with support or patches. This is because there may be changes in 2016 that are not compatible with 2008. You may not hit those, but you may.
Where is this article? I don't see a link.
September 13, 2016 at 12:25 pm
Thanks Steve, yeah that is what I thought.
The page link was posted by Thomas on this thread. I am copying it here. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143550.aspx
----------------------------------------------------
September 13, 2016 at 1:14 pm
Larry Henson (9/4/2016)
FWIW,Microsoft had their "replication expert" on site for a few days about 6 months ago and she said it replication was being deprecated. She said some new version of always on was it's replacement. We went back and forth on that as it has a long way to go if that is the case. She said the needed changes wont make it in time for 2016 so time frame is unknown. She said at Microsoft it is a dead feature but they did fixes in 2012 and don't plan to touch it again. We have been on several calls since with issues and they have told us they don't plan to fix any of them so we have just worked around them.
I think she said with the new way the do releases and kill off features (forgot their term). It would be at least 3 editions from 2016. Unless they have a great replacement that is rock solid they may not have to make changes but they will have to keep it around. Sounds like what they are currently doing.
She has been there over 10 years if I recall but maybe it is all BS, but I don't think so.
We had their expert here as well, last month. That wasn't what she told us.
Actually because we are such heavy users of replication, I finally had the opportunity to talk with the Replication team about bugs, limitations and enhancements. They didn't commit to anything but said that they would review what had been discussed.
That left me feeling good because we had to make several changes to their SP's in order to reduce the blocking and deadlocks we were experiencing because of our size.
As for the rest of it, yes. It states in their docs that they only support 2 versions down and one up. So since we run a wide selection of versions, we have publisher/subscribers that are 2005 - 2014. Our central distributors are 2012. We cannot ad a 2016 box until all of the 2005's are upgraded. Our distributors can handle everything we have now.
Steve Jimmo
Sr DBA
“If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a Nation gone under." - Ronald Reagan
October 27, 2017 at 11:58 am
sjimmo, old post but wanted to see if you had any update?
I wonder if we had the same lady, she lived in Arizona. We also spoke with replication team at the time and they said about the same thing but nothing came of it even though we supplied the code fixes for some of the issues. From what we had been told it may have been before 2008 since they had made changes to replication. 2012 they made changes but it was to support always on or some other new feature as well as some bug fixes but ended up causing some new bugs. Anyways I don't think they can/will kill it for a long time but will not enhance/fix things and push you to another solution if asked.
Thanks
October 27, 2017 at 2:38 pm
Replication is not going away, at least not in anything I've heard. Some may want it to, but there is work being done to improve it. I think little changed in 2017 as they need to get it working on Linux, and right now it's not working. Replication was added in Azure, so there is work being done.
You can expect replication to exist for some time. I wish they did even more work on it, but it's not deprecated or leaving.
October 27, 2017 at 4:08 pm
For some replication is a major tool, but I think that those who are using it are a minority probably from a good understanding of how it works and how it can be used. I don't think it will go away either even if it is do to the complexity of removing it. In our case we are replicating literally tens of millions of transactions/day. For the most part it is working flawlessly, but it took some work to get it there.
One additional issue is the EXPERTS who are discouraging it's use, who don't understand themselves how it works or can be used. It is a shame that these people act like the gurus.
Steve Jimmo
Sr DBA
“If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a Nation gone under." - Ronald Reagan
October 27, 2017 at 6:03 pm
Indeed. I hate to see people discourage its use. It's brittle and a pain, but it does provide some really nice benefits that you don't easily get with other tech.
October 27, 2017 at 7:09 pm
You're right about it being a pain, especially out of the box though the ideas of operation behind the scenes are good. It works well for a smaller installation but in large scale operations these principals can be painful. The fact that MS is not willing to be much assistance because of OS changes that had to be made at the registry level didn't help. But in tracing out the internal SP's and seeing what is happening allowed for the needed modifications. Things like setting batch sizes for transactions, limiting it to 20000. Setting interactive and non-interactive desktop heap sizes to allow for larger numbers of agent connections to run.
These configuration changes are extreme, and in our case, with 2 remote distributors using multiple distribution databases was necessary. But the normal user can operate fresh out of the box without issue and is a great tool in high transaction OLTP systems. We also used it for our OLAP system as well.
As long as it is understood that this is an additional tool in our toolbox and can be very powerful assisting in optimization and scalability.
This is enough of my babbling. I will end this by saying that I would be wiling to assist anyone who is interested in using replication.
Steve Jimmo
Sr DBA
“If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a Nation gone under." - Ronald Reagan
October 28, 2017 at 7:43 am
TLDR Answer: Nope.
Long Answer: On SQL Cruise back in August, we had Bob Ward. Fantastic experience getting to hang out with the driving force behind a lot of the work done at Microsoft. Anyway, the subject of deprecated features came up. Bob said, nothing, but nothing, that's currently on the deprecation list is going away any time soon. By any time, he means, years. They just aren't looking to move away from deprecated technology. That said, lots of technology isn't getting the same kind of love as others. Replication is one. They're maintaining and keeping it working, but they're not expanding it's capabilities and making it better. You'll be able to keep using it as everyone else has outlined, but don't expect to see improvements.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
Viewing 11 posts - 16 through 25 (of 25 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply