sliding window scenario - taking partions offline

Question

Is there a way in MS SQL Server 2005 to take a partition / file groups / files offline?

I have a lot of data in certain tables and would like to use the sliding window Scenario: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345146%28SQL.90%29.aspx#sql2k5parti%5Ftopic24

Instead of keeping all the data in the first partition, I would like to take the partition (or files or file group if possible) offline and make it unavailable for my queries.

Thanks for any help / ideas,

Patrick

Answer 1

You can start from here: How to Implement an Automatic Sliding Window in a Partitioned Table on SQL Server 2005.

But i would recommend against putting old partitions offline, a much better approach is to have two tables with identical structure, Current and Archive, and use the sliding widnow partitioning to move the old partitions from Current to Archive, see Transferring Data Efficiently by Using Partition Switching.