Temporal Tables

Using Temporal Tables for Slowly Changing Dimensions

One of my favorite recent additions to SQL Server is the ability to use temporal tables to retain change history. As I wrote in an earlier post on this topic, temporal tables allow one to easily configure a table keep all of the changes (including updated and deleted rows) in a designated history table. In this post, I will share…


Introduction to SQL Server Temporal Tables

Temporal data storage, which was defined in the ANSI SQL:2011 standard, describes an architecture in which relational databases maintain row-level versioned copies of data. When using temporal data, the database does automatically what many DBAs and application developers have had to do manually for years to track point-in-time versioning for individual tables. Starting in 2016, Microsoft added SQL Server temporal…