Data Compression in SQL Server 2008 SQL Server 2008 provides two
types of compression namely, Database Backup Compression and
Data Compression. We have already discussed the Database Backup
Compression feature in my article titled How to configure and
Use Database Backup Compression in SQL Server 2008. Data
Compression was first introduced in SQL Server 2005 with Service
Pack 2 where Microsoft introduced a new storage format called
vardecimal to store decimal and numeric data types as variable
length columns. In SQL Server 2008 this concept is applicable
even to fixed length data types such as integer, char and float.
The main advantage of using Data Compression is that it reduces
the storage cost and increases the query performance by reducing
I/O. Database Administrator needs to be very careful before
using Database Compression as it is more CPU intensive activity.
If you are not facing CPU crunch and you have more I/O based
activities then it is a good idea to implement data compression,
which can give you