The copy errors out with “Cannot copy” and “Target is table with tracking columns” (4330996)

When running copy on a table involved in Change History, also referred to as Change Data Capture (CDC), the following errors show up:

sp_ctrl (alvsupu07:5438)> copy owner.table

  Cannot copy "OWNER"."TABLE"

  Target is table with tracking columns

Copy does not support objects involved in Change History.

Souce and target Change History tables should not be in sync by design.

Here is why: In Change History replication, the Change History inserts a new record in target table for every DML done on the source. So the target table will always have more rows than the source table due the nature of such replication which preserves the historical data. For example DELETE may remove a source row but will add an extra row to log that DELETE instead of removing a target row. There is no concept of fixing the out of sync on target rows. Put another way, it is not possible to record historical changes that occurred on source rows up to the present time hence compare cannot apply those historical changes. It is possible to maintain historical changes henceforth using tools like Shareplex but it is impossible to restore previous historical changes which were lost due to user actions or other reasons.