Kids and wife are bored of me talk about it :) the board is in really good shape but the sockets for the controllers and so on are really funky …. How do I give them a clean? With the plastic I wasn’t sure isopropyl was safe.
I've devolved to building single article merge replication going to see what I can get moving. It just feels like the SnapShot agent isn't producing items that that are needed when the snap shot is actually applied and using a number of servers I've simply failed to get Merge running at all.
I've tried on different servers, alas don't have much ability to test with anything but 2025. Resorted to Claude for just generic troubleshooting but I'm getting nowhere fast. Anyhoo I was starting to prep a bug report and found myself thinking Merge replication being broken would be creating some noise.... and I haven't seen it.
Any thoughts/Tips?
SQL Server 2025 Merge Replication Bug - Snapshot Agent fails to generate MSmerge_ctsv_ views
Summary
The snapshot agent in SQL Server 2025 does not generate the `MSmerge_ctsv_` column tracking view as part of article snapshot files. The merge agent subsequently fails when attempting to create replication triggers because it expects this view to exist on the subscriber.
Environment
- SQL Server 2025 version **17.0.4035.5** (latest CU) — Publisher, Distributor, and Subscriber all on same version
- Merge replication, push subscription
- Reproduced consistently across multiple publications, articles, and clean subscriber databases
Steps to Reproduce
Expected Behavior
Snapshot agent generates a `.cft` file for each article containing a `CREATE VIEW MSmerge_ctsv_[GUID]` statement. Merge agent applies snapshot successfully.
Actual Behavior
The `.cft` file contains only the conflict table creation and `sp_MSsetconflicttable` call. No `CREATE VIEW MSmerge_ctsv_` statement is generated regardless of column tracking setting.
The merge agent then calls `sys.sp_MSaddmergetriggers` on the subscriber which internally references the missing view, producing:
Cannot find the object 'MSmerge_ctsv_[GUID]', because it does not exist or you do not have permission. (Error 15151)
Evidence
The view exists correctly on the publisher after publication setup:
SELECT OBJECT_DEFINITION(OBJECT_ID('MSmerge_ctsv_[GUID]'))
Returns a valid view definition referencing the merge trigger object IDs. The snapshot agent is simply not scripting this view into the article snapshot files for application on the subscriber.
Impact
Merge replication is completely non-functional on SQL Server 2025 version 17.0.4035.5. Any publication with any number of articles fails at snapshot application. There is no viable manual workaround for publications with large numbers of articles (hundreds in our case) as the view would need to be manually created for each article with the correct subscriber-side trigger object IDs.