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Add columns at publication side

We have setup a replication which runs every day. When we are changing the articles on the publication, we just remove the replication, do our changes and set it back on. We then do a new initial snapshot and our replication is working again. So the data in the source is always the same as in the target. We now want to change this as follows:
We need to shrink our database on the source an leave it as it is on the target so, we need to have 1 year of data on the publication side and three years of data on the subcriber side. This is easy to do by not triggering the ‘Deletes’ on the source side so they will not be deleted on the target side. At this way, we can delete records at the source and leave them on the target. Is it now possible to change the schema of the articles by adding a column on the publication side that is automatically be created at the target side or not? I did some investigation but could not get it to work. When I need to setup the whole replication again, I loose my data on the target side which is not allowed. Are there any changes to make this work correct?
I forgot to mention that we have SQL Server 2000
True, if you make any schema changes you have to re-initialize the replication to affect the changes. _________
Satya SKJ
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