Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Internals

Partially contained databases

One main problem faced when moving databases between instances of SQL Server is the application dependency on instance-level objects or objects defined on some other user databases that typically are left behind and need to be identified and moved manually. These instance-level objects could be logins, linked servers, jobs, and so on. Objects defined outside the database are usually tables accessed on other user databases in the same instance. SQL Server 2012 introduces partially contained databases, which is a first step toward full contained databases. In full contained databases, everything required for the application to work is contained in the database without outside dependencies. Although a limited functionality ...