Question

I am trying to figure out a way to validate the data in my publisher and subscriber in SQL 2005 replication. I thought of using sp_publication_validation, but it needs db_owner permission and we are not allowed to have it in our company.

So I did bit more reading and found out about two other SPs that I think work for me.

First one is sp_article_validation, which I plan to run on the publisher. For each article that I call this SP, its gonna give the row count and a checksum. With that info, I intend to call sp_table_validation on the subscriber, passing the row count and checksum from the previous SP, there by validating both tables.

What do you guys think? Is this a proven way to validate data in replication? There is very little documentation on these SPs. Here is the link:

sp_table_validation – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa239370(v=sql.80).aspx
sp_article_validation – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177511(v=SQL.90).aspx

Thanks for taking a look at this post

Vikram

Answer 1

Here is the documentation from Books Online regarging Validating Replicated Data

Personally I prefer to use the tablediff utility