Question

Is there a query that can help identify tables whos rows potentially are longer than 8060 bytes in MSSQL 2008? I understand that this is the maximum size of a data row.

eg.

create table a (
  a varchar(4000),
  b varchar(4000),
  c varchar(4000)
)

Answer 1

A quick and dirty one.

SELECT OBJECT_NAME(object_id),SUM(max_length)
FROM sys.columns     
WHERE is_computed=0 and OBJECTPROPERTY(object_id,'IsUserTable')=1
GROUP BY object_id    
HAVING SUM(max_length) > 8060 or MIN(max_length)=-1 /*MAX datatype*/

Dropped and altered columns can still consume wasted space. This is visible through sys.system_internals_partition_columns

You might be better off looking at sys.dm_db_partition_stats to determine which objects actually have off row pages allocated.