Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Unleashed, Second Edition

Managing Databases

After the database is created, you are left with the ongoing task of managing it. At the database level, this generally involves manipulating the file structure and setting options appropriate to the usage of the database.

Managing File Growth

As we saw in the previous section on creating databases, SQL Server manages file growth by automatically growing files by preset intervals when a need for additional space arises. I find this, however, to be a very loose definition of the word manages. What actually happens is that when the database runs out of space, it suspends all update activity, checks if it is allowed additional space and if space is available, and then increases the file size by the value defined by FILEGROWTH ...