Compressing Tables, Indexes, and Partitions

SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition supports on-disk storage compression for tables stored as heaps, tables stored as clustered indexes, nonclustered indexes, and indexed views. Because you can configure compression of partitioned tables and indexes independently for each partition, different partitions of the same object can use different compression settings.

Using Row and Page Compression

The storage engine handles all aspects of compression. SQL Server 2008 supports two types of compression:

  • Row compression

  • Page compression

Row compression affects the physical storage of data within rows. Most data types are affected in some unique way, but no application changes are required because of these changes. ...

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