Error 20598 - The row was not found at the Subscriber when applying the replicated command

Question

I am facing the error 20598 with Transactional Replication:

The row was not found at the Subscriber when applying the replicated command.

Normally this error occurs when an UPDATE or DELETE statement is executed by the publisher for a primary key value and the record (against which UPDATE/DELETE executed) does not exist in the subscriber database.

But in my case the scenario is different.

I diagnosed and found the record exists in the article/table of subscriber database, because when I executed the command (retrieved with help of sp_browsereplcmds) at the subscriber it executed successfully.

What may be the possible reason of it?

I'm using SQL Server 2016 both side.

Answer 1

What may be the possible reason of it?

There are multiple reasons that could cause this:

1. It could be someone or a process/apps deleted and inserted the data in subscriber db (while cmds are being applied). Review your subscriber security settings and check what process/apps are accessing the subscriber db.
2. Multiple publications connected to subscriber db. pub1 (deleted the data first) then pub2 tried to UPDATE/DELETE the data which could cause an error 20598.
3. Triggers on subscriber tables that could delete/insert/update the data.

HTH