Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Providing a Point-in-Time Reporting Database

If what you really need is a true point-in-time reporting database from which you can run ad hoc or canned reports, often a database snapshot can serve this purpose much better than resorting to log shipping or data replication. Key to determining when you can use this database snapshot technique is whether the reporting load on this database server instance can easily support the reporting workload and whether the update transactions against this database are adversely affected by the database snapshot overhead of each transaction. Figure 28.9 shows the typical database snapshot configuration for one or more database snapshots that are to be used for reporting.

FIGURE 28.9 A point-in-time reporting ...