force replication of replicated tables - azure

Question

Some of my tables are of type REPLICATE. I would these tables to be actually replicated (not pending) before I start querying my data. This will help me avoid data movement.
I have a script, which I found online, which runs in a loop and do a SELECT TOP 1 on all the tables which are set for replication, but sometimes the script runs for hours. It may seem as the server sometimes won't trigger replication even if you do a SELECT TOP 1 from foo.
How can you force SQL Datawarehouse to complete replication?
The script looks something like this:
begin
CREATE TABLE #tbl
WITH
( DISTRIBUTION = ROUND_ROBIN
)
AS
SELECT
ROW_NUMBER() OVER(
ORDER BY
(
SELECT
NULL
)) AS Sequence
, CONCAT('SELECT TOP(1) * FROM ', s.name, '.', t.[name]) AS sql_code
FROM sys.pdw_replicated_table_cache_state AS p
JOIN sys.tables AS t
ON t.object_id = p.object_id
JOIN sys.schemas AS s
ON t.schema_id = s.schema_id
WHERE p.[state] = 'NotReady';
DECLARE #nbr_statements INT=
(
SELECT
COUNT(*)
FROM #tbl
), #i INT= 1;
WHILE #i <= #nbr_statements
BEGIN
DECLARE #sql_code NVARCHAR(4000)= (SELECT
sql_code
FROM #tbl
WHERE Sequence = #i);
EXEC sp_executesql #sql_code;
SET #i+=1;
END;
DROP TABLE #tbl;
SET #i = 0;
WHILE
(
SELECT TOP (1)
p.[state]
FROM sys.pdw_replicated_table_cache_state AS p
JOIN sys.tables AS t
ON t.object_id = p.object_id
JOIN sys.schemas AS s
ON t.schema_id = s.schema_id
WHERE p.[state] = 'NotReady'
) = 'NotReady'
BEGIN
IF #i % 100 = 0
BEGIN
RAISERROR('Replication in progress' , 0, 0) WITH NOWAIT;
END;
SET #i = #i + 1;
END;
END

Answer 1

Henrik, if 'select top 1' doesn't trigger a replicated table build, then that would be a defect. Please file a support ticket.
Without looking at your system, it is impossible to know exactly what is going on. Here are a couple of things that could be in factoring into extended build time to look into:
The replicated tables are large (size, not necessarily rows) requiring long build times.
There are a lot of secondary indexes on the replicated table requiring long build times.
Replicated table builds require statirc20 (2 concurrency slots). If the concurrency slots are not available, the build will queue behind other running queries.
The replicated tables are constantly being modified with inserts, updates and deletes. Modifications require the table to be built again.

Answer 2

The best way is to run a command like this as part of the job which creates/updates the table:
select top 1 * from <table>
That will force its redistribution at the correct time, without the slow loop through the stored procedure.