FIX: Replication Snapshot Agent May Fail with Access Violation Error When A Long Filter Clause is Used

When you use transactional replication, if the publication article uses a filter clause longer than 129 characters, then the snapshot agent may fail with this message in the agent history:

Use View object to shorten the length of the filter clause to 129 characters or less.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in SQL Server 7.0. This problem has been corrected in U.S. Service Pack 2 for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:For more information, contact your primary support provider.

The example that follows demonstrates this behavior.

Suppose you have a table named Orders in the publication and you define a horizontal filter on this table as: This filter clause may cause the Snapshot agent to generate an access violation error because the filter clause exceeds 129 characters in length.

To avoid this error create a View object by using the view in your filter clause: You can then filter the Orders table with this condition: This filter clause design avoids the access violation behavior.