Schema Only Snapshot

Is it possible to create a snapshot for merge replication that would apply
the changes necessary for replication without deleting the data in the
subscriber database?

The scenario is this - a client application has a database that will become
the subscriber. That database has existing data that needs to be sent to the
publisher, but may not have ROWGUID columns defined for all the publication
tables. Using a snapshot to initialize the subscription creates the necessary
columns, but deletes all the data in the subscriber database (it drops the
table and recreates it). I can set the publication articles not to alter
names in use, but then the ROWGUID columns don't get set up.

If there was a way to create the snapshot that would just apply the schema
changes without clearing the existing data that would be great, but I'm
expecting that the answer to that is probably 'no, it can't be done'. But I
thought I would check here first.

Thanks
--
Jack Harris
Seminars and Systems

Yes - you need to use the COLUMNPROPERTY function with the IsRowGuidCol
property:

SELECT * FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE COLUMNPROPERTY( OBJECT_ID(table_name),column_name,'IsRowGuidCol') = 1

HTH,
Paul Ibison (www.replicationanswers.com)