On a new transaction replication publiciation/subscription, the tracer tokens I generate always show pending for publisher to distributor and distributor to subscriber.  The log reader agent is running and last action continues to update.   The Performance column in the repl monitor shows Excellent with a 00:00:03 latency.  Distribution cleanup, agent history clean up, and replication agents checkup all show job succeeded and a resent last start time and their running times are usualy around a second or show 00:00:00.  On the subscriber, the "view synchronization status"  is being updated with number of transactions and commands being delivered.  I can confirm that updates are making it to the subscriber database.  On the surface, everything apears ok but I'm bothered by the tracker tokens not working.

this is SQL Server 2008 R2 10.50.1600.1 - OS is Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

-Larry

Hi Larry,

This could be a known bug:

http://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/522602/tracer-tokens-should-post-to-all-subscriptions

As per the connect listing, can you have a look in msRepl_commands for the tracer tokens and see what article_id they are registered against...  then verify if that article_id is in your subscription.

Thanks

Thanks for the reply Kevin - there are no tracer tokens in the msRepl_commands table - there are only commands of type 30. there are, on average, about 2000 records in this table.  The connect bug is about the subscription missing the article with the lowest article_id from the publication - not the case in my situation.  Maybe an issue with one of the agent jobs?

-Larry

• Edited by daponte Thursday, August 22, 2013 12:12 PM

I've seen Replication Monitor incorrectly report pending tracer tokens before.  Usually restarting Replication Monitor or bouncing the Log Reader Agent will clear it up.

Check the token tracking tables for publisher_commit, distributor_commit, and subscriber_commit.

USE distribution
GO

-- publisher_commit and distributor_commit
SELECT TOP 20 * FROM dbo.MStracer_tokens

-- subscriber_commit
SELECT TOP 20 * FROM dbo.MStracer_history

Hi Brandon - recycling the log reader agent has not affected the situation.  Here are the results of the MSTracer queries:

tracer_id publication_id publisher_commit distributor_commit
-2147483636 6 2013-08-26 09:51:36.857 NULL

parent_tracer_id agent_id subscriber_commit
-2147483636 16 NULL

This is an indication that there is an issue with Log Reader Agent performance since you are getting a NULL distributor_commit in MStracer_tokens.

Do you see the tracer token when you execute sp_replshowcmds?  Pending tracer tokens will have a type of 1073741871.

I have the same issue: Tracer Tokens show NULL and never resolve.   I stop the log reader and run sp_replshowcmds and it returns no rows.  

I show 2 rows in MSTracer_history with NULL subscriber_commit values.

I have started the verbose level 2 log of the log reader.  I don't see the tracer values in the verbose log nor do I see 1073741871.

In this case run sp_replcounters at the published db to see if the log reader delivers commands from the published db to the distribution db.