Pre-installed databases?

[Kim Christensen]

After installing MS SQL Server 7 several databases appears in the database
folder named: distribution, master, model, msdb, northwind, pubs and tempdb.



Is it safe to delete any of those pre-installed bases?



Regards Kim Christensen

[Hugo Kornelis]

Re: Pre-installed databases?

On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 07:53:09 +0200, Kim Christensen wrote:
[color=blue]
>After installing MS SQL Server 7 several databases appears in the database
>folder named: distribution, master, model, msdb, northwind, pubs and tempdb.
>
>
>
>Is it safe to delete any of those pre-installed bases?
>
>
>
>Regards Kim Christensen[/color]

Hi Kim,

The master database is where information about all other databases and
about logins and such is kept. If you delete this, SQL Server will no
longer operate. Keep it.

The tempdb is used to store temporary tables, both those that are
explicitly created by users and those implicitly created by the query
optimizer as past of the query execution plan. Keep it.

The msdb database is where information about backups and restores is
kept, as well as information on scheduled maintenance. I *think* that
SQL Server will still operate without it. If you plan to do any
scheduled maintenance, you must keep it. If you're sure you'll do all
maintenance manually, I'd still advise you to keep it.

Northwind and pubs are sample databases. Many books on SQL Server use
these databases to provide examples that the reader can safely toy
with. The same goes for many examples in Books Online. And some posts
in SQL Server related newsgroups use pubs or Northwind as well. It's
an easy way to illustrate what you want, since you can assume that
everyone who uses SQL Server has this database.
It is safe to delete these databases, allthough they consume very
little space. If you delete them now and change your mind later: on
the CD are scripts to recreate both pubs and northwind.

Finally: distribution. I don't have this one (using SQL Server 2000).
Maybe it's specific to version 7.0, or maybe it is only installed if
you choose specific options. Judging by the name, it might have
something to do with distributed transaction processing, but that's a
terrain I'm not familiar with.

Best, Hugo
--

(Remove _NO_ and _SPAM_ to get my e-mail address)

[Simon Hayes]

Re: Pre-installed databases?

"Kim Christensen" <duriel@mailme. dk> wrote in message news:<408ca3c3$ 0$255$edfadb0f@ dread12.news.te le.dk>...[color=blue]
> After installing MS SQL Server 7 several databases appears in the database
> folder named: distribution, master, model, msdb, northwind, pubs and tempdb.
>
>
>
> Is it safe to delete any of those pre-installed bases?
>
>
>
> Regards Kim Christensen[/color]

master, model, msdb and tempdb are system databases, and it's not
possible to drop them. See Books Online for more information about
what they're used for (in BOL2000 the page is called "System Databases
and Data", not sure about BOL7). The distribution database is used for
replication, but can be removed if you remove replication.

pubs and Northwind are sample databases which are used in examples in
Books Online and many other places - it's usually worth keeping them
on development/test servers, but many people drop them from production
servers. You can recreate them from scripts in the \Install directory
- instpub.sql and northwind.sql, or something similar.

Simon