Written by boB Taylor, Principal Microsoft Premier Field Engineer.
SQL Server Compression EstimatorNow Available! A smaller, leaner database.  I have released my SQL Server Compression Estimator tool to CodePlex.

One of the most exciting additions to SQL Server 2008 was the capability to apply data compression. The benefits are many including reduced disk I/O and memory utilization, with a small cost of CPU overhead.

In a database that may contain thousands of objects, determining which objects and / or partitions of those objects may benefit from data compression can be time consuming and labor intensive.

Not anymore! SQL Server Compression Estimator (SSCE) will allow you to estimate the best compression for your objects. It will estimate both ROW and PAGE compression for all objects, and will optionally report the Index Maintenance Ratio (a ratio that indicates how often an index is updated versus how often it is used to satisfy queries). You can then use that information to perhaps choose a less aggressive compression algorithm for heavily updated indexes.

For more information on the benefits of data compression please visit the SQL Customer Advisory Team site and view some in depth information regarding data compression

PLEASE NOTE: This tool leverages the SQL Management Objects to build the list of available SQL Servers. If you have named instances, ensure that a SQL Server Browser service is running.

SQL Compression Estimator

If you have the SQL Server Browser service running, or you are executing this tool on a default instance you should see the following Authentication request:

Authentication Request

Once you have provided authentication information you will be presented with the main screen where you should:

  1. Select the database to process
  2. Decide the percentage of compression you would like, in order for an option to be displayed in the resuits (i.e. if you select 75, only compression that would result in a 75% savings will be displayed)
  3. Decide if you want Index Maintenance Ratios to be calculated:

Index Maintenance Ratios

When the processing is complete (and this could take a while in a database with a large number of objects) you will be presented with the results:Results of the Compression Estimator

You then have two options for saving the results of the analysis

Options for saving the results.

  1. Save Results will save the entire contents of the results window to a comma separated value (CSV) file
  2. Create Script will create a Transact-SQL script that contains the appropriate syntax to implement those items selected:

Saving or creating scripts.

Well that's it for now. Until next time this is…

boB 'The Tool Man' Taylor