DCPs - missing component

Question

Don't ask me how but I'm in a situation where I have DCPs published that have component ids that no longer exists in Tridion!

I know the GUI will stop you deleting a component if its published but somehow (perhaps unpublishing failed but the CM still deleted the component???), they've been removed from the CM and now I've a load of DCPs in broker I can't get rid off!

Anyone ever experienced this? Anyway to rectify other than manually updating db?

This is Tridion 2011 setup, single deployer, single broker db.

Answer 1

The most common supported way to solve this is to manually create a transport package that removes the offending DCPs.

So:

1. Set Cleanup to False in your cd_deployer_conf.xml
2. Unpublish any DCP
3. Capture the transport zip file
4. Open the instructions.xml in the zip
5. Change it to point to your DCP
6. Drop the updated zip file into your deployer's incoming folder

Answer 2

Compliments to Puf for creativity. I checked his approach with Tridion Customer Support and - although they say it is a grey area - they will allow this.

The only alternative is to create a new broker database and publish everything that was already published there. Then you can swap it with the live db.