I was recommending to some students today, a standard developer workstation
configuration, and one of my most stressed recommended items was either SQL
Server or MSDE.

Then, as a developer, I can have acopy of the data warehouse schema (not the
data, just the empty schema). That way, when I have an epiphany at home, I
can fire up the notebook and try some experiments in my application code or
query plan when I am off the corporate network.

The question he asked, was, "Wouldn't that occupy an awful lot of storage
space on a notebook?"

So I am reaching for a way to calculate the size of .mdf + .ldf of an EMPTY
data warehouse with contents similar to these:

About 50 or so tables. Some are two column lookups, some have between 5 and
10 columns, and there are 3 or 4 big ones, on the order of 30 to 50 columns.

Each table begins with a INT primary key, and almost everything else is
NVARCHAR 50 or NVARCHAR 255. 2 of the big tables are all NVARCHAR 255, and
there are a few DATETIME columns scattered about.

Remember, these are empty tables, just schema only.

I have a copy of his ERD diagram to refer to, so I can give him a precise
figure. I am just not sure how to go about calculating, without scripting
the whole thing and creating it.

Thoughts?

--

Peace & happy computing,

Mike Labosh, MCSD MCT
Owner, vbSensei.Com

"Escriba coda ergo sum." -- vbSensei

That kind of thing should occupy a small amount of space, since all tables
are empty. Since you have the scripts, it should not take long to run and
find out the size.

--
Tom

----------------------------------------------------
Thomas A. Moreau, BSc, PhD, MCSE, MCDBA, MCITP, MCTS
SQL Server MVP
Toronto, ON Canada
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Tom.Moreau


[quoted text, click to view]
I was recommending to some students today, a standard developer workstation
configuration, and one of my most stressed recommended items was either SQL
Server or MSDE.

Then, as a developer, I can have acopy of the data warehouse schema (not the
data, just the empty schema). That way, when I have an epiphany at home, I
can fire up the notebook and try some experiments in my application code or
query plan when I am off the corporate network.

The question he asked, was, "Wouldn't that occupy an awful lot of storage
space on a notebook?"

So I am reaching for a way to calculate the size of .mdf + .ldf of an EMPTY
data warehouse with contents similar to these:

About 50 or so tables. Some are two column lookups, some have between 5 and
10 columns, and there are 3 or 4 big ones, on the order of 30 to 50 columns.

Each table begins with a INT primary key, and almost everything else is
NVARCHAR 50 or NVARCHAR 255. 2 of the big tables are all NVARCHAR 255, and
there are a few DATETIME columns scattered about.

Remember, these are empty tables, just schema only.

I have a copy of his ERD diagram to refer to, so I can give him a precise
figure. I am just not sure how to go about calculating, without scripting
the whole thing and creating it.

Thoughts?

--

Peace & happy computing,

Mike Labosh, MCSD MCT
Owner, vbSensei.Com

"Escriba coda ergo sum." -- vbSensei

Mike Labosh (mlabosh_at_hotmail_dot_com) writes:
[quoted text, click to view]

Wouldn't even a modest notebook today have at least 40 GB of disk? An
empty database with 50 tables, would just be a couple of MB, unless
there also are a bunch of stored procedure, in which case you may need
some hundreds of MB - which there still should be space for on the notebook.



--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/books.mspx
Books Online for SQL Server 2000 at