SQL Server® 2008 Administration: Instant Reference

3.3. Manage Database Files

Data in a database is ultimately stored in a file, so if you want to manipulate database size and storage, you are going to have to deal with the file structure at some level. In the following sections, we are going to look at the database operations that involve files.

First of all, we will look at increasing a database size. There are two ways to do this, either by adding new files to a database or increasing the size of existing files. If you add additional files, you can also choose to organize those files into sets called filegroups. Finally, you will learn how to decrease a database size, which you can do either by decreasing a file size or by deallocating a file.

3.3.1. Add Files to a Database

One way to increase ...