Question

I am building a database which contains about 30 tables:

• The largest amount of columns in a table is about 15.
• For datatypes I am mostly using VarChar(50) for text
• and Int og SmallInt for numbers.
• Identity columns is Uniqueidentifiers

I have been testing a bit filling in data and deleting
again. I have no deleted all data, so everey table is empty.
But, if I look inside the properties of the database in
Management Studio, the size says 221,38 MB!

How comes that? Please help, I am getting notifications
from my hosting company that I am exceeding my limits .

Best regards,
🙂

Answer 1

I would suggest that you look first at the recovery mode for the database. By default, the recovery mode is FULL. This fills the log file with all transactions that you perform, never deleting them until you do a backup.

To change the recovery mode, right click on the database and choose Properties. In the properties list, choose the Options (on the right hand pane). Then change the “Recovery model” to Simple.

You probably also want to shrink your files. To do this, right click on the database and choose Tasks –> Shrink –> Files. You can shrink both the data file and the log file, by changing the “File Type” option in the middle.

Martin’s comment is quite interesting. Even if the log file is in auto-truncate mode, you still have the issue of deletes being logged. If you created large-ish tables, the log file will still expand and the space not recovered until you truncate the file. You can get around this by using TRUNCATE rathe than DELETE:

truncate table <table>

does not log every record being deleted (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177570.aspx).

delete * from table

logs every record.