Transactional REPL - concept question?

Replication
1

Hi All, I am recently new to replication (few years as DBA though) and I am supporting an application which uses repl to maintain 'historical + current' data for SSRS purposes only (I know... one of those situations).

  1. First question is if there is an upgrade of the app which changes table structures and adds new tables, does this fact "immediately" implies the need for a new Snapshot?
  2. Does it make sense to even try to re-sync REPL after the upgrade?
  3. Is it 'possible/safe' to just drop the changed articles and add new ones without reinitializing?
  4. I've heard/read about initializing from backups, but I understand that it is done from a backup of Publisher to Subscriber therefore negating the intention of the developers to maintain a repository like DB for reporting purposes only, is this correct?

Thanks so much in advance to anyone that can comment on these questions as it not easy to find info with this app design.

lec

2
  1. You can configure the articles to replicate changes to tables, etc. Any new objects would need to be explicitly added. On the plus side, dropping an article from a publication does not require a new snapshot; it does not drop the table at the subscribers.
  2. Dropping is fine. Adding will require a new snapshot. As an alternative, you could create another publication for the new tables and then snapshot that. This could be useful if the original publication was large and a new snapshot would take a while to complete.