Database Snapshots

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item Database Snapshots

  • I think a better question is "Whats a shared scalable database?" This is the first time that I have ever heard of it. Amazing.

    [font="Times New Roman"]-- RBarryYoung[/font], [font="Times New Roman"] (302)375-0451[/font] blog: MovingSQL.com, Twitter: @RBarryYoung[font="Arial Black"]
    Proactive Performance Solutions, Inc.
    [/font]
    [font="Verdana"] "Performance is our middle name."[/font]

  • Can someone provide information about "a shared scaleable database"?

  • sheppc1214 (12/30/2008)


    Can someone provide information about "a shared scaleable database"?

    Sounds like marketing BS.

    A database has to be "shared", or it wouldn't really be much of a database.

    As for "scaleable", is there a vendor out there that would say theirs isn't?

  • From the 2008 BOL:

    The Scalable Shared Database feature enables you to scale out a read-only database built exclusively for reporting (a reporting database). The reporting database must reside on a set of dedicated, read-only volumes whose primary purpose is hosting the database. By using commodity hardware for servers and volumes, you can scale out a reporting database that provides the same view of the reporting data on multiple reporting servers. This feature also allows a smooth update path for the reporting database. For more information, see Scalable Shared Databases Overview.

    [font="Times New Roman"]-- RBarryYoung[/font], [font="Times New Roman"] (302)375-0451[/font] blog: MovingSQL.com, Twitter: @RBarryYoung[font="Arial Black"]
    Proactive Performance Solutions, Inc.
    [/font]
    [font="Verdana"] "Performance is our middle name."[/font]

  • RBarryYoung (12/30/2008)


    From the 2008 BOL:

    The Scalable Shared Database feature enables you to scale out a read-only database built exclusively for reporting (a reporting database). The reporting database must reside on a set of dedicated, read-only volumes whose primary purpose is hosting the database. By using commodity hardware for servers and volumes, you can scale out a reporting database that provides the same view of the reporting data on multiple reporting servers. This feature also allows a smooth update path for the reporting database. For more information, see Scalable Shared Databases Overview.

    Interesting, but it sounds like a kludge.

    Does anyone know of a situation where someone has actually implemented this?

  • I'm proposing the Scalable Shared Database architecture at my current client and will probably start a proof of concept shorty. I'm a little concerned that none of the BI friends I've talked with have seen this implemented.

    Has no one implemented this?

    Victor Alcazar

    Vihho Technology

  • Nice question.

    I found it hard to work out an answer: a snapshot database can't be a shared scalable database - so presumably if I could take a snapshot of a shared scalable database the snapshot wouldn't have that property; but that's not a problem, a snapshot database doesn't have to have all the same properties as what it's a snapshot of (it has allow_snapshot_isolation ON even if the original database has it OFF) so I can't draw any conclusion from that.

    I couldn't find anything in BoL that told me the answer (not even in the reference supplied in the answer).

    So I wondered about what's the point of such a snapshot. The shared scalable database is already a read-only copy of the original database at a particular point in time, so maybe there's no point. I decided that I couldn't see any other reasons for answering one way or the other, so my answer had to be no, you can't do it. Luckily that's the right answer. Of course I still don't know whether to believe it, because it doesn't appear to be documented.

    Tom

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply