Table Essentials
Tables are defined as objects in SQL Server databases. Tables consist of columns and rows of data, and each column has a native or user-defined data type. Tables have two units of data storage: data pages and extents. Data pages are the fundamental units of data storage. Extents are the basic units in which space is allocated to tables and indexes. Data within tables can be organized using partitions.
Understanding Data Pages
For all data types except large object data types, table data is stored in data pages that have a fixed size of 8 KB (8,192 bytes). Each data page has a page header, data rows, and free space that can contain row offsets. The page header uses the first 96 bytes of each page, leaving 8,096 bytes for data and ...
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