What is a Database Snapshot?
* The Database Snapshot is a new feature that is available in Enterprise edition of SQL Server 2005.
* It provides a read-only, static view of a database.
* Multiple snapshots can exist for a single database on the same server instance as the database.
The following are the advantages and disadvantages of database snapshot.
One of the exasperating things while creating a snapshot is that you cannot use SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) instead you need to make use of T-SQL. I am creating a snapshot of the database Deepak as follows,
You cannot drop a database before dropping the snapshot created for the database. Now I have dropped the snapshot Deepak_snapshot_2030 created for the db Deepak. Refer the figure below illustrating how to drop a database snapshot,.
Assume you had dropped some records from your database but prior to dropping it you have taken a snapshot of you db, so the snapshots come handy in such scenarios. You can restore back the records from this snapshot as shown in the below figure,