sp_spaceused (Transact-SQL)

Displays the number of rows, disk space reserved, and disk space used by a table, indexed view, or Service Broker queue in the current database, or displays the disk space reserved and used by the whole database.

Topic link icon Transact-SQL Syntax Conventions

Syntax

sp_spaceused [[ @objname = ] 'objname' ] 
[,[ @updateusage = ] 'updateusage' ]

Arguments

  • [ @objname=] 'objname'
    Is the qualified or nonqualified name of the table, indexed view, or queue for which space usage information is requested. Quotation marks are required only if a qualified object name is specified. If a fully qualified object name (including a database name) is provided, the database name must be the name of the current database.

    If objname is not specified, results are returned for the whole database.

    objname is nvarchar(776), with a default of NULL.

  • [ @updateusage=] 'updateusage'
    Indicates DBCC UPDATEUSAGE should be run to update space usage information. When objname is not specified, the statement is run on the whole database; otherwise, the statement is run on objname. Values can be true or false. updateusage is varchar(5), with a default of false.

Return Code Values

0 (success) or 1 (failure)

Result Sets

If objname is omitted, the following result sets are returned to provide current database size information.

Column name

Data type

Description

database_name

nvarchar(128)

Name of the current database.

database_size

varchar(18)

Size of the current database in megabytes. database_size includes both data and log files.

unallocated space

varchar(18)

Space in the database that has not been reserved for database objects.

Column name

Data type

Description

reserved

varchar(18)

Total amount of space allocated by objects in the database.

data

varchar(18)

Total amount of space used by data.

index_size

varchar(18)

Total amount of space used by indexes.

unused

varchar(18)

Total amount of space reserved for objects in the database, but not yet used.

If objname is specified, the following result set is returned for the specified object.

Column name

Data type

Description

name

nvarchar(128)

Name of the object for which space usage information was requested.

The schema name of the object is not returned. If the schema name is required, use the sys.dm_db_partition_stats or sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats dynamic management views to obtain equivalent size information.

rows

char(11)

Number of rows existing in the table. If the object specified is a Service Broker queue, this column indicates the number of messages in the queue.

reserved

varchar(18)

Total amount of reserved space for objname.

data

varchar(18)

Total amount of space used by data in objname.

index_size

varchar(18)

Total amount of space used by indexes in objname.

unused

varchar(18)

Total amount of space reserved for objname but not yet used.

Remarks

database_size will always be larger than the sum of reserved + unallocated space because it includes the size of log files, but reserved and unallocated_space consider only data pages.

Pages that are used by XML indexes and full-text indexes are included in index_size for both result sets. When objname is specified, the pages for the XML indexes and full-text indexes for the object are also counted in the total reserved and index_size results.

If space usage is calculated for a database or an object that has a spatial index, the space-size columns, such as database_size, reserved, and index_size, include the size of the spatial index.

When updateusage is specified, the SQL Server Database Engine scans the data pages in the database and makes any required corrections to the sys.allocation_units and sys.partitions catalog views regarding the storage space used by each table. There are some situations, for example, after an index is dropped, when the space information for the table may not be current. updateusage can take some time to run on large tables or databases. Use updateusage only when you suspect incorrect values are being returned and when the process will not have an adverse effect on other users or processes in the database. If preferred, DBCC UPDATEUSAGE can be run separately.

Note

When you drop or rebuild large indexes, or drop or truncate large tables, the Database Engine defers the actual page deallocations, and their associated locks, until after the transaction commits. Deferred drop operations do not release allocated space immediately. Therefore, the values returned by sp_spaceused immediately after dropping or truncating a large object may not reflect the actual disk space available.

Permissions

Permission to execute sp_spaceused is granted to the public role. Only members of the db_owner fixed database role can specify the @updateusage parameter.

Examples

A. Displaying disk space information about a table

The following example reports disk space information for the Vendor table and its indexes.

USE AdventureWorks2012;
GO
EXEC sp_spaceused N'Purchasing.Vendor';
GO

B. Displaying updated space information about a database

The following example summarizes space used in the current database and uses the optional parameter @updateusage to ensure current values are returned.

USE AdventureWorks008R2;
GO
EXEC sp_spaceused @updateusage = N'TRUE';
GO

See Also

Reference

CREATE INDEX (Transact-SQL)

CREATE TABLE (Transact-SQL)

DBCC UPDATEUSAGE (Transact-SQL)

sys.allocation_units (Transact-SQL)

sys.indexes (Transact-SQL)

sys.index_columns (Transact-SQL)

sys.objects (Transact-SQL)

sys.partitions (Transact-SQL)

System Stored Procedures (Transact-SQL)

Concepts

SQL Server Service Broker