Materialization Process

Materialization creates and activates subscriptions, and copies data from a primary database to a replicate database.

When publication subscriptions are materialized atomically, nonatomically, or incrementally, only one article subscription is processed at a time. When publication subscriptions are materialized using the bulk or no materialization methods, all article subscriptions are processed together.

If, when you are materializing a new subscription, there are other materializing or dematerializing subscriptions for the same replication definition and replicate database, the new subscription is assigned a Pending status (the recovering column in rs_subscriptions is set to 2). If you execute check subscription, the subscription’s status is returned as Pending at the replicate Replication Server and Invalid at the primary Replication Server.

If the primary Replication Server System Database (RSSD) is unavailable or any other problems occur, the recovering column in rs_subscriptions is set to 1 to denote that the subscription requires recovery.

Subscriptions with a Pending status are processed one at a time, in the order entered. The request_date column in the rs_subscriptions table indicates the time the subscription request was entered.

• Atomic Materialization
  Atomic materialization is the default materialization method, and is invoked using the default version of the create subscription command.
• Nonatomic Materialization
  Execute the create subscription command with the without holdlock option at the replicate Replication Server to create a subscription using the nonatomic materialization method. The subscription is saved in the replicate Replication Server System Database (RSSD). If there are no other subscription requests for the same replication definition and replicate database, the subscription is defined at the primary Replication Server.
• Direct Load Materialization
  Use direct load materialization to materialize data between different kinds of primary and replicate databases.
• Bulk Materialization
  The bulk materialization method involves manually transferring subscription data between databases. Use this method when a subscription is too large to copy through the network, or when other subscription methods are not supported for the primary or replicate database.