Posted by Brian Cryer on 06/27/05 11:06

"Erland Sommarskog" <esquel@sommarskog.se> wrote in message
news:Xns968035B96389Yazorman@127.0.0.1...
> debian mojo (debian_mojo@yahoo.com) writes:
>>
>> The problem is that all the source tables dont have a pri key... and
>> i have learnt that Trans Rep doesnt support replicating tables without
>> Pri key. Besides there's no question of adding Pri Keys to the database
>> which is already live!
>
> Well, it want take long before the database is dead. Not having
> primary keys is asking for serious problems.
>
>> Second thing is that, the database size is in between 1 and 2GBs. That
>> means even Snapshot Rep is not suitable!
>>
>> Shall i go for Merge Rep? I heard that there are conflicts in that?
>
> I doubt that merge replication is possible without PKs. If rows can't
> be identified, it's getting darn difficult to do replication.
>
> Seems to me you have three options:
>
> 1) Add PKs to the database, and do transactional replication.
> 2) Regularly backup the database and restore on the other end.
> 3) Log shipping.
>
>
> --
> Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se
>
> Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
> http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/productdoc/2000/books.asp

I fully agree with everything Erland has said.

You may not currently have primary keys, but surely there are fields that
you are treating as unique? How do you currently uniquely identify a record?
A primary key can be defined using more than one field.

Treat Erland's comment as a dire warning:

> Well, it want take long before the database is dead. Not having
> primary keys is asking for serious problems.

Its put very well, and spot on.

Brian.

www.cryer.co.uk/brian

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