Creating push subscriptions without a connection to the Subscriber in the New Subscription Wizard

Creating push subscriptions in the New Subscription Wizard now requires an active connection to the Subscriber during configuration. For more information about using the wizard, see How to: Create a Push Subscription (SQL Server Management Studio).

Using file transfer protocol (FTP) to initialize Subscribers running SQL Server version 7.0

This feature is available for Subscribers running SQL Server 2000 or later versions. For more information, see Transferring Snapshots Through FTP.

Creating subscriptions in Windows Synchronization Manager

You can no longer create subscriptions in Synchronization Manager, but you can still synchronize subscriptions. For more information, see Windows Synchronization Manager.

Subscribing to a publication by locating it in Active Directory

Adding a publication to Active Directory using the @add_to_active_directory parameter of sp_addpublication or sp_addmergepublication has been deprecated. Subscribing to a publication by locating it in Active Directory has been discontinued.

Snapshot ActiveX control

This control allows you to embed the Snapshot Agent in applications. Use the new managed Snapshot Agent instead. For more information, see SnapshotGenerationAgent and How to: Create the Initial Snapshot (RMO Programming).

Remote agent activation

SQL Server 2000 supported running the Distribution Agent or Merge Agent on another computer and then activating that agent remotely using DCOM. Support has been discontinued for Distributors running SQL Server 2005 and later; it has been deprecated for Distributors running earlier versions of SQL Server. For more information, see "Remote Agent Activation" in SQL Server 2000 Books Online.

Microsoft Access (Jet 4.0) Subscribers

Jet is the underlying database used by Access, and replication supported subscriptions to Jet databases in SQL Server 2000. These subscriptions are no longer supported.

We recommend using SQL Server Express instead. Access can use a SQL Server database as a backend, and SQL Server databases are not affected by this issue.

Message Queuing option for queued updating subscriptions

With queued updating subscriptions, changes from Subscribers are written to a queue; changes are then read from the queue and delivered to the Publisher by the Queue Reader Agent. In SQL Server 2000, subscriptions could use a SQL Server queue or Message Queuing to queue changes. The type of queue was specified with the @queue_type parameter of sp_addpublication, which allowed values of sql and msmq (Message Queuing). In SQL Server 2005, only a value of sql is allowed. Existing publications that use Message Queuing are modified during upgrade to use a SQL Server queue. If you have applications that depend on queued updating using Message Queuing, these applications will need to be rewritten to accommodate a SQL Server queue. For more information about queued updating subscriptions, see Updatable Subscriptions for Transactional Replication.

Publishing from SQL Server Express

SQL Server MSDE could serve as a Publisher for merge publications. SQL Server Express, cannot serve as a Publisher. It can subscribe to merge, transactional, and snapshot publications. Merge replication, and transactional replication with updating subscriptions, both allow changes to be propagated from Subscribers back to the Publisher.

IVBCustomResolver interface

This interface allowed you to write COM-based custom conflict resolvers in Visual Basic. In SQL Server 2005, we recommend using Business Logic Handlers rather than COM-based resolvers. For more information, see Executing Business Logic During Merge Synchronization.

You can still write COM-based resolvers in C++. For more information, see COM-Based Custom Resolvers.