COMPRESSED YES?

or COMPRESSED NO?

Compression saves disk space, usually 40% to 60%.  How can that be bad?

If the table is being updated, it can be really bad...

Each time a column is updated, its compressed length can change.  If the length changes, a physical delete and insert can happen, instead of just an update.  Not good.

So, how about inquiry-only tables? 

Each time the data is accessed, it needs to be uncompressed before applying the WHERE clause predicates and returning the row to you.  I've benchmarked this several times and have consistently seen an 8% increase in cpu time when a large table is compressed.  Not a lot, so is it worth it?

It depends...

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