Replicated

[gico1972]

I am having problems editing a database that i created which is very frustrating. We have recently changed server at work and that is the only difference that i am away of.

In the past i was able to easily make changes the the DB structure etc without this problem.

I am now being met with the following pop up when i try to make a design change

"You cant modify the design of "xxxxx" at a replica"
Design changes to the replicated objects can be made only at the Design Master.

Do you want to open is as read-only??

Any help on this would be very much appreciated.

Regards

 

[SOS]

1. I'm sure David Fenton will chime in on this as he specializes in posts that deal with replication.

2. I hope you have ONLY been using this for the BACKEND data and no frontend stuff.

3. Why are you using replication anyway?

 

[dfenton]

If you need replication, then you need to recover the Design Master. This is a choice on the replication menu in the Access UI.

But, it does show that somebody was incompetent and never bothered to understand how Jet replication works.

Each replica in a replica set has a unique ReplicationID that is associated with the absolute name of the replica. That means the machine, path (UNC or drive letter) and filename. If you change the name of the file, the location in the path or the name of the machine, the next time the replica is open, the Jet replication subsystem says "Oh, this replica is not the one associted with this ReplicaID in the replication system tables, so I'm going to change this replica's ReplicaID, because otherwise there would be two replicas in the replica set with the same ReplicaID, which would completely corrupt the replica set and make accurate synchronization impossible."

Now, when the replica whose name or location is altered is the Design Master, that means that the file is no longer the DM, which is associated with a different ReplicaID.

In a case where you've really lost the DM (as you have when you've replaced a server with a new server having a different name), then you can recover the DM safely via the Access UI.

But the correct way to do this was to use the Jet MoveReplica command to move the DM from the original server to the new one, or to transfer DM status via a synch between those two files.

The question of whether or not you need replication is a valid one. It sounds like nobody is competent to be managing Jet replication (otherwise this wouldn't have happened) so maybe you should unreplicate.