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What are 'Snapshot' views and how to use them?

  • 16 July 2019
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Userlevel 7
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As developer we are given some data model table types, namely making a Table, a View or a Snapshot. In the documentation it only says "In a snapshot, just as in a view, data from one or more tables can be combined, though in a snapshot this data is actually saved."

I am unsure how to use it and do not really have the time to experiment with it. Is there someone that can show me what a Snapshot is, what it does, how to set it up (in depth preferably) and what advantages (and maybe disadvantages) it has?

Thanks in advance!
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Best answer by Jasper 17 July 2019, 10:35

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Hi @Jasper ,

Any updates on this topic? We would like to use snapshots to improve performance as some calculated columns / views take long to load. However, we cannot find much information on this topic in the documentation.

Thanks!

Userlevel 7
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Thanks Jasper for explaining! We will discuss the need of Snapshots in our project and submit an Idea if we want to use it.
Userlevel 7
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Snapshots are views whose results are physically stored in a table to improve performance. On DB2 these are called Materialized Query Tables, on Oracle Materialized Views and on SQL Server Indexed Views.

For Oracle and DB2 we have been supporting snapshots for quite some time, but for SQL Server we haven't come to develop it yet.

If you think you need this for SQL Server projects, please read through the limitations and requirements first. And if you still want it, feel free to submit an idea 😉.

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