Contained Databases

Contained Databases are databases that are isolated from the SQL Server instance in which they run and from other databases.

A fully contained database is totally independent on the configuration of the SQL Server instance in which it runs. All configuration data, metadata, and user administration is contained in the database instead of in the master database of the instance.

A partially-contained database still has some of this data managed by the SQL Server instance.

The MSS connector can access contained databases in the same way it can access regular databases. However, when you change an existing database to a contained one, the instance collation and the tempdb collation are replaced by the database collation and the catalog default collation for that database.

As a result:

• You may experience collation conflict errors with SQL scripts that worked correctly before the change.
• When retrieving rows from temporary tables the ordering of these rows may be different.