Before you promote a subscription or selected table mappings

You should consider the following points before promoting a subscription or selected table mappings:

End replication

Ensure that you have ended replication on the subscription.

Ensure that tables are present in the schema being promoted and that the tables have identical structures

For Management Console to successfully promote subscriptions, check that the database tables for the schemas selected for promotion are valid. Otherwise, promotion will fail. For example, you cannot promote two tables from one schema into separate schemas.

Organize subscriptions into projects

Organize the subscription that you want to promote into a project. The purpose of promoting subscriptions is to relocate your subscription from one environment to another. Placing subscriptions into projects are a useful organizational tool to distinguish between an existing and newly promoted subscription.

Review mapping details for the subscription

Ensure that you have reviewed mapping details you set for the subscription. These mapping details are promoted to the new environment. Management Console promotes the properties of your subscription, including the source database information, source table selections, table mappings, the replication method, source and target column mappings, any notifications you set for the subscription, data translations, and any expressions into the new environment.

Identify database name and owner

Identify the database name and owner of the new source database. If you have built an expression on the source such as %GETCOL, then this kind of expression will reference the names of columns from other tables. Before you promote these expressions to the new environment, you should know the name and owner of the new source database that contain the table referenced in the expression.

For example, you may have built a derived column on the source that references values from another table located in another database:

%GETCOL(JobTitle, Northwind.dbo.CustomerData, Sales Manager)

When promoting expressions to a new environment, the table called CustomerData might exist in another database other than Northwind. If so, then you need to specify the name of the new source database that contains this table in the Promote Subscription wizard.

Identify the full path name or program name of user exits called by an expression

If you have an expression that calls a stored procedure on the source using the %USER column function, you need to make sure that stored procedure exists in the new source database and specify the location of the stored procedure (for example, the DLL path) in the Promote Subscription wizard.

Also, if you have an expression that calls a stored procedure on the target using the %STPROC function, you need to make sure that stored procedure exists in the new target database. You should also know the location (full path) for the stored procedure.

Refreshing only a subset of rows

If SQL Where clauses have been specified to define a subset of rows within a refresh configuration for a table mapping, they will not be promoted to the new table mapping.