I need to regain UNALLOCATED SPACE inside a database file, so that I can avoid 'out of space' errors that stop queries from running.
I've deleted about 12GB worth of data from a 20GB database, but no space was regained.
Some details:
- SQL Sever 2008 R2
- Fixed database file size (no autogrowth)
- 1 large table - 90% of the data in the database
- table is a heap, and has 1 non-clustered index
- recovery model is simple
- I'm not allowed to restart the server
- additional backup is not an option (we have daily)
- cannot rebuild the index online (no space), or offline (user using the table)
How can I regain space quickly in order to restore the database functionality?
Thanks.