Estimating the Size of a Database
When designing a database, you may need to estimate how big the database will be when filled with data. Estimating the size of the database can help you determine the hardware configuration you will need for:
- Achieving the performance required by your applications. For more information, see Hardware Considerations in Database Performance.
- Ensuring the appropriate physical amount of disk space to store the data and indexes.
Estimating the size of a database can also lead you to determine whether the database design needs refining. For example, you may determine that the estimated size of the database is too large to implement in your organization and that more normalization is required. Conversely, the estimated size may be smaller than expected, allowing you to denormalize the database to improve query performance.
To estimate the size of a database, estimate the size of each table individually, and then add the values obtained. The size of a table depends on whether the table has indexes, and if so, what type of indexes.