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

Yay!

The fix for this bug is here. Microsoft published Cumulative Update 6 for SQL Server 2005 SP3. Please see previous post for the original bug description. We had problems when not using partition groups on our merge replication topology (see the TSQL Scripts below). When there were batch deletions caused by filtering at the Publisher, those rows were deleted at the publisher (published database) during the next replication (synchronization with subscribers)

The faulty stored procedure was sp_MSdelsubrowsbatch

The faulty line of code, believe it or not, was a single line
on the faulty SPROC and can be seen below in bold:

— 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

This caused deletions in the published database. Each subscriber had a subset of the published database. The merge replication was created with filters to allow having at one subscriber only the data pertaining to that subscriber and not the data pertaining to any other subscriber.

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

Happy coding guys!