Happy New Year everyone! The year 2007 is going to be very exciting time! My second child will be born, I'll start building my house, I'll keep learning myself (still not enough of SQL Server :-)). I can not wait to see what it's gonna be like!

Last month my two articles on SQL Server appeared on Polish TechNet website. Here are links:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/poland/technet/article/art032.mspx (What's new in SQL Server Profiler)

http://www.microsoft.com/poland/technet/article/art026.mspx (Automatic row numeration in SQL Server 2005)

Database snapshots are a new feature of SQL Server 2005. They allow to create a copy of your database from a certain point in time. It is said that you do not need much disk space for snapshot because only modified pages are copied to the snapshot's files. However, if you open Windwos Explorer and go to the location of snapshot, you will notice that there is at least one file sized exactly to the actual size of the appropriate data file of the original database. Do not worry, because it doesn't mean you need as much hard drive space as database size is. The real size of the snapshot's file is marginal. You can see it when you look at the Windows Explorer to the disk free space while creating a new snapshot. The free space will stay at the same level. Huh, I was scared when I saw this trick for the first time :-)

 

Comment (28.12.2006): There is a simple way to check the real size of the snapshot's files: just right-click on the file in explorer and check the size on disk... In SQL Server 2005 you can use fn_virtualfilestats system function to check the same.