FIX: Snapshot Delivery Failure During BCP IN Not Recognized by Merge Agent (300447)

SYMPTOMS

When any error occurs during a BCP IN operation while a snapshot is being delivered by the Merge Agent, the Merge Agent reports an error message similar to:

The remote procedure call failed and did not execute. The step failed.

However, subsequent attempts of the Merge Agent work past the preceding error and continue to merge incremental changes. Even if you later recognize that the data is not synchronized, if changes are made at the subscriber, sometimes you may not be able to upload the changes made at the subscriber before reinitialization.

CAUSE

The snapshot application process inserts the snapshot-related schema information before the entire snapshot completes successfully. Also, the merge process related tables are copied successfully resulting in subsequent runs of the Merge Agent to work past the error condition. Moreover, the ODBC driver did not report communication failure information properly thereby making the Merge Agent unable to detect the failure of the snapshot delivery.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Data Access Components 2.6. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

300635 INFO: How to Obtain the Latest MDAC 2.6 Service Pack

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for SQL Server 2000. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

290211 INF: How to Obtain the Latest SQL Server 2000 Service Pack

The English version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:

   File name    Platform
   ----------------------
   s80299i.exe  x86 SQL Server 2000 original release fix
   s80407i.exe  x86 SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 1

NOTE: Due to file dependencies, the most recent hotfix or feature that contains the preceding files may also contain additional files.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was first corrected in SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 2 and MDAC 2.6 Service Pack 2.