Dematerialization Processing

Dematerialization removes subscriptions and, optionally, data from the replicate database. Dematerialization also removes subscription information from the RSSDs at the primary and replicate sites.

Dropping a subscription causes Replication Server to stop sending changes from a primary database to a replicate database. You can use the drop subscription command to drop subscriptions for either table or function replication definitions.

drop subscription removes the subscription from the RSSDs of the primary and replicate Replication Servers.

When you drop a subscription to a table replication definition, you can specify that Replication Server delete the subscription’s rows from the replicate database. Or, you can delete the rows manually.

When you drop a subscription to a function replication definition, the replicate data associated with the function is not deleted from the replicate database.

There are two methods of dematerialization:

with purge dematerialization, which selectively deletes rows not used by other subscriptions
without purge dematerialization, which allows you to manually delete rows in replicate tables

In either case, the primary Replication Server stops sending data for the dropped subscription, if the data is not included in other subscriptions at the same replicate site.

Note: For user defined datatypes: Subscriptions that specify columns subject to class- or column-level translations in the where clause cannot be dematerialized automatically. You must use the bulk or no-materialization method.