dinolg (1/30/2013)
Everyone seems to mention BOL, but fails to mention a quote, or any kind of reference.
The BOL reference is in the explanation.
I thought it was pretty clear that the question referred to data compression as implemented by SQL server.
Hugo Kornelis (1/31/2013)
roger.plowman (1/30/2013)
However, the question now becomes, why *doesn't* it compress seperately stored data?I started to reply here, but as the length of my reply grew I realised I probably better put it on my blog. So here is the link: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/hugo_kornelis/archive/2013/01/31/why-does-sql-server-not-compress-data-on-lob-pages.aspx.
Great explanation - read this everyone.