I am in the process of designing a SQL 2005 database with tables that may hold several hundreds of millions of rows.
Due to various constraints, I am trying to save as much space as possible by optimizing the size of a row. Currently one row contains the following columns:
byte(4), byte(3), byte(3) = 10 bytes.
Adding 4 bytes for the row header, plus 3 bytes for the null bitmap (as described in BOL) I am ending up with 17 bytes/row. In a real world test it was an average of 18.3 bytes/row.
There are no indexes, no primary key and all columns are not NULL. Hence my question: since no column allows a null value, is there a possibility to "remove" the 3 bytes Null Bitmap
Is there any other way to shave off one or two more bytes by using a clustered index etc
Thanks