deleting SQL Srv 2K5 publication with no Agents

I have the case where a SQL Srv 2K5 publication has no agents - agents were accidentally erased during backup/restore. I was abel to erase subscription.

The error is "The specified @.job_name <jab name> does not exist. (Microsft SQL Server, Error: 14262)

Is there any way to remove publication?

Help will be greatly appreciated!

Vladimir

Do you have trouble in dropping subscription/publication? Error looks like to happen when you drop a remote pull subscription.

Anyway, you may call SP directly to drop the subscription, then publication. Please refer to BOL.

Similar call will be like:

use [PubDB]
exec sp_dropmergesubscription

exec sp_mergesubscription_cleanup

exec sp_dropmergepublication

Hope it will be helpful.

Thanks

Yunjing

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Hello,

I am dropping xactional publication, not merge subscription. Normally, it is not a problem, but in this case all three agent jobs are gone.

When I try to delete it, I am getting message about absent snapshot agent, Error 20678 "|Could not find the regular snapshot job for the specified publication <publication name>. Supply either @.job_id or @.job name to idnetify the job."

But the jobs like I said is gone.

I have tried sp_droppublication. Got error: "Message 14013, This database is not enabled for publication", which does not make sense since publication is there already.

Thanks for trying.

Vladimir

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Hello, Vladimir,

I think meta data got messed up somehow. Could you check whether publications are still there?

please call the below two sql to see if you can get any thing.

On publisher server, select * from [PublicationDB]..syspublications

On distributor server, select * from [distributionDB]..MSpublications

Thanks

Yunjing

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Hi Yunjing,

The syspublications does not have any rows.

MSpublications does not list this "orphaned" publication, but it lists all other "healthy" publication I created.

Yesterday I backed up and restored the publisher database. There is the switch during restore 'keep_publication' which gave me hope that

if I will not set it during restore that will break link b/w db and publication. But after restore error still percists.

R-clicking on publication allows to create publication drop script. I ran it, and against every article in publication the message was "the publication does not exist'. This is while I see that publication in GUI.

Also, r-clicking, I tried to start Snapshot agent to create snapshot - the absent snapshot may be the root of the problem.

I guess it was erase together with erasure of snapshot agent.

It failed at the end with error "Cannot insert NULL into column "publisher_database_id", table "distribution.dbo.MSrepl_transactions".

Thanks Yunjing for keeping up.

Vladimir

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