Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Summary

Database snapshots can be thought of as an enabling capability with many purposes. They are great for fulfilling point-in-time reporting requirements easily, reverting a database to a point in time (recoverability and availability), insulating a database from issues that may arise during mass updates, and potentially reducing the processing impact of querying against the primary transactional databases (via database mirroring and database snapshots). You must remember that database snapshots are point-in-time and read-only. The only way to update a snapshot is to drop it and re-create it. Data latency of this point-in-time snapshot capability must always be made very clear to any of its users.

Database snapshots are snapshots of the ...