One of the most exciting additions to SQL Server 2008 was the capability to apply data compression. The benefits are many including reduced disk I/O and memory utilization, with a small cost of CPU overhead. In a database that may contain thousands of objects, determining which objects and / or partitions of those objects may benefit from data compression can be time consuming and labor intensive. Not any more! SQL Server Compression Estimator (SSCE) will allow you to estimate the best compression for your objects. It will estimate both ROW and PAGE compression, and will optionally report the Index Maintenance Ratio (a ratio that indicates how often an index is updated versus how often it is used to satisfy queries). You can then use that information to perhaps choose a less aggresive compression algorithm for heavily updated indexes.
