I got a suggestion over at Stackoverflow to post here....greatful for any and all help.
Please bear with me I think this might take a while to explain. For many years now my company has hosted a solution for a client involving a complex web application with smaller mobile solution consisting of IIS 6 for the web app, SQL Server 2000 on its own server and Visual Studio 2005 Pocket PC app replicating with SQL Server via Merge Replication. This whole time the mobile solution has been very solid and did not require many updates so we have replicated with sscesa20.dll the entire time.
We recently migrated this entire solution as follow:
- Web Box - New Win Server 2008 R2 running IIS 7.5
- SQL Server Box - New Win Server 2008 R2 running SQL Server 2008
- Mobile app - small updates converted to Visual Studio 2008 and Windows for Mobile 5
The new web box received the 64 bit version of SQL Server Compact 3.5 tools and we now call sqlcesa35.dll from the mobile device to perform merge replication.
The basic idea of the entire process is that mobile field users get assigned safety inspections to perform on buildings. When a facility in the system needs an inspection an inspection record is created via the web app in the DB. A status flag is set such that the HOST_NAME() is utilized to make sure only records for a given inspector with this particular status will let them show up on their mobile device. The user can synch multiple times in the field sending their data up to the SQL Server/web app and receive more inspections down or other updates such as look up table data...typical merge replication here and has been working great for years. Once the field user changes the status of the inspection, it will travel from mobile device to SQL Server database and be removed from their iPaq. The inspection has additional work flow on the web app from here on out.
Now on to the problem. We migrated everything publishing the exact same subset of tables with the same joins/filters. Same settings on the publication as far as I can tell are the same. However; when a user gets a new inspection down to the hand held for the very first time, enters data, then synchronizes back to the database every row has a conflict. Since we have default conflict resolution the publisher wins and the data collected in the field it lost. The inspection now looks blank just as it did when it first came down to the mobile device. If the user syncs again with or without changes on the mobile (subscriber) all is well. Any future changes from the mobile device are intact.
It is as if the web/db data is newer then the hand held data. I am 100% sure it is not. I have looked at table triggers, web app logic, etc. We were very careful not to include any application changes to DB/web app/mobile app with respect to data manipulation during this migration.
Here is a summary of the order of operation:
New row created in the database >> Mobile user receives data >> mobile user updates data >> synchronizes - data is lost. Conflicts show up for all data lost.
From here on out any additional mobile changes are captured. Merge replication works in both directions flawlessly.
Thanks for taking the time to read please help. I am stuck after 3 days.