Setting Up Pull Subscriptions

A pull subscription is carried out while a subscription server is being administered. A subscription is created by "pulling" in a publication or an article from a publication server.

With pull subscription, the act of publishing is separate from the act of subscribing, and the user administering the subscription server need not be the same person who administers the publication server.

One advantage of using pull subscriptions is that the SA or DBO of the subscription server decides which publications will be received. Another advantage of a pull subscription is that for each subscription server, subscriptions from many publication servers can be set up during one administrative session.

Before subscribing to publications or articles, create the necessary destination databases on the subscription server, and authorize those databases to subscribe to publications. For information on creating databases, see Chapter 6, Managing Databases. For information on authorizing databases to subscribe to publications, see Configuring Servers for Replication, earlier in this chapter.

To set up a pull subscription

From the Server Manager window, select the subscription server.
From the toolbar, choose the Manage Subscriptions button. Or from the Manage menu, choose Replication, and then from the drop-down menu that appears, choose Subscriptions.

The Manage Subscriptions dialog box appears, displaying a list of the servers that have been authorized to publish to this subscription server.
Open the published database tree for a publication server (choose the "" box next to the server name), and then from the displayed list of published databases, open the publications list for the database (choose the "" box next to the database).
A list of that database's publications appears.
Select a publication. Or open the article tree for the publication (choose the "" box next to the publication name), and then select an article.
This is the publication or article that will be subscribed to. If you select a publication, all articles in the publication will be included in the subscription.
Choose Subscribe.
The Subscription Options dialog box appears.
From the list in the Destination Database box, select a database.
This is a database on the subscription server that will receive the replicated tables and data.
Under Sync Method, select a synchronization option.
- Select Data Synchronization Automatically Applied when you want SQL Server to automatically synchronize the schema and data of the destination tables with the published tables. This is the default synchronization method.
- Select Data Synchronization Manually Applied by Operator when synchronization will be carried out by a user. The user must obtain schema and data files from the distribution server, manually synchronize the schema and data of the destination tables with the published tables, and then inform SQL Server that the synchronization is complete.
  Selecting manual synchronization can affect all the replicated data being sent to a destination database, since when the synchronization job becomes the next job in the distribution database queue, replication to the entire subscription database is paused until the manual synchronization is carried out and SQL Server is informed that the synchronization is complete. For more information about manual synchronization, see Acknowledging a Manual Synchronization, later in this chapter. Also see Chapter 13, Replication Concepts.
- Select No Data Synchronization when you want SQL Server to immediately begin sending modifications to published data to the destination database. SQL Server assumes that the publication and destination tables are already synchronized. This option is intended for advanced users who will be implementing a custom replication solution.
To view information about the publication, choose the More Info button.
The Publication Info dialog box appears.
Choose OK.
The subscription is added. The Manage Subscriptions dialog box returns.