When I use the GUI to make any changes to transactional replication on SQL server, I live in fear of the "the changes you have made require a reinitialization of all articles" dialog.
I have had this happen even when doing something simple like adding or removing individual tables.
How do I avoid this?
Are there replication settings that impact when a full reinitialization is required? I found this blog post that claims that publication properties @immediate_sync and @allow_anonymous should be set to 0, I've done that but I've still sometimes had it prompt to reinitialize the whole thing.
Should I be scripting the add/remove instead of using the GUI?
Also, we frequently remove a table from replication but need to add it back in later, are there scripts out there to preserve the replication settings so this process is easier?