The fix for batch deletions at Publisher when use_partition_groups is set to false In Merge Replication is indeed there!!!

Yay!

The fix is in there. Please see previous post for the original bug description. We had problems when not using partition groups on our merge replication topology, whenever there were batch deletions caused by filtering those rows were deleted at the publisher during the next replication.

The faulty stored procedure was sp_MSdelsubrowsbatch


The faulty line of code, believe it or not, a single line
on the faulty sproc:

-- change tombstone type for the non-original rows (the rows that got deleted via expansion).
update dbo.MSmerge_tombstone
set type = 1
from
(select distinct tablenick, rowguid from
#notbelong where original_row <> 1) nb,
dbo.MSmerge_tombstone ts
where ts.tablenick = nb.tablenick and
ts.rowguid = nb.rowguid
option (FORCE ORDER, LOOP JOIN)

On the sproc after CU6:
update dbo.MSmerge_tombstone
set type = @METADATA_TYPE_PartialDelete
from
(select distinct tablenick, rowguid from
#notbelong where original_row <> 1) nb,
dbo.MSmerge_tombstone ts
where ts.tablenick = nb.tablenick and
ts.rowguid = nb.rowguid
option (FORCE ORDER, LOOP JOIN)


Basically the deletions caused by filtering (Partial deletes) were marked as tombstone or user deletions.

Given the following variable declarations:

declare @METADATA_TYPE_Tombstone tinyint
declare @METADATA_TYPE_PartialDelete tinyint
declare @METADATA_TYPE_SystemDelete tinyint

and assignation:

set @METADATA_TYPE_Tombstone= 1
set @METADATA_TYPE_PartialDelete= 5
set @METADATA_TYPE_SystemDelete= 6

If you ever doubted the power of a single line of code... :-p

Happy coding guys!