Why is my Dynamics GP database growing / getting so large / taking up so much space?

By Steve Endow

There was a recent forum post by a user who had noticed that his Dynamics GP system database was growing, and was apparently looking to understand how to monitor the growth.

I have dealt with this question before, but never remember the query, so I wanted to post it here for future reference.

My approach is to run a query that shows the number of records and the size of each database table in the database.  Usually, most of the database is utilized by a handful of tables, so once you find your top 5 or 10 tables, you'll quickly understand what type of data is consuming the space in your database.

I found this Stack Overflow thread that addresses the issue and offers a few queries.  I prefer the query that was most upvoted because its result set is in a single clean set that can be copied and pasted into Excel.

The query lists I have modified the Order By clause to sort the largest tables to the top.

SELECT
   t.NAME AS TableName,
   s.Name AS SchemaName,
   p.rows AS RowCounts,
   SUM(a.total_pages) * 8 AS TotalSpaceKB,
   SUM(a.used_pages) * 8 AS UsedSpaceKB,
   (SUM(a.total_pages) - SUM(a.used_pages)) * 8 AS UnusedSpaceKB
FROM
   sys.tables t
INNER JOIN      
   sys.indexes i ON t.OBJECT_ID = i.object_id
INNER JOIN
   sys.partitions p ON i.object_id = p.OBJECT_ID AND i.index_id = p.index_id
INNER JOIN
   sys.allocation_units a ON p.partition_id = a.container_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN
   sys.schemas s ON t.schema_id = s.schema_id
WHERE
   t.NAME NOT LIKE 'dt%'
   AND t.is_ms_shipped = 0
   AND i.OBJECT_ID > 255
GROUP BY
   t.Name, s.Name, p.Rows
ORDER BY
SUM(a.total_pages) DESC


And the results look like this:

Steve Endow is a Dynamics GP Certified Trainer and Dynamics GP Certified IT Professional in Los Angeles.  He is also the owner of Precipio Services, which provides Dynamics GP integrations, customizations, and automation solutions.

You can also find him on Google+ and Twitter

http://www.precipioservices.com