..is now Online at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms130214(SQL.105).aspx However, not everything in there seems to be new and…
As you might recall, unicode datatypes where not up for compression in SQL Server 2008. This was added to the R2 version though. Now you can ROW or PAGE compress Unicode datatypes and hence save space for most european languages signs that don’t actually need the additional byte that unicode implementation needs.
So how do I get that added functionality when I migrate to R2? You just need to rebuild the index or table, after the upgrade. Which most systems do on a regular basis anyway. Or – you don’t even have to rebuild the index. Just update the data, when it’s rewritten the data is compressed (given of course that you have enabled compression already). Inserts of unicode data will benefit from the compression as well, even without rebuilding index.
Need help with this or something else SQL Server specific? Feel free to contact us at SQL Service.
/Jonas Bergström