Inside Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005, Fourth Edition

Database Snapshots

One of the most interesting new features in SQL Server 2005 is database snapshots, which allows you to create a point-in-time read-only copy of any database. In fact, you can create multiple snapshots of the same source database at different points in time. The actual space needed for each snapshot is typically much less than the space required for the original database because the snapshot only stores pages that have changed, as we’ll see shortly.

Database snapshots allow you to do the following:

• Turn a database mirror into a reporting server. (You cannot read from a database mirror, but you can create a snapshot of the mirror and read from that.)

• Generate reports without blocking or being blocked by production operations.

• Protect ...