New answers tagged datafile
4
The database engine won't care about the extension, it is just a logical name for humans to understand what they are seeing.
4
The extension and the file path don't really matter – the content does. Moreover, when you use Oracle Managed Files (see "Using Oracle Managed Files" in Database Administrator's Guide), Oracle automatically generates file names, you only have to specify the destination path on the file system or on ASM (see "Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM)" ...
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But I see nothing that tells it whether to grow the primary MDF, or grow by adding additional NDFs.
There is NO option native in SQL Server that will allow you to do this, unless you explicitly specify to add additional secondary files (.ndf) using Alter database command.
More info Files and Filegroups Architecture & Database Files and Filegroups.
Is ...
3
Like @JonSeigel said above in his comment, this is not a SQL Server action. Your third party application(s) must be doing this on their own, or somebody manually creating the additional data files.
And, is there a way to combine these NDF files back into the primary MDF?
What you're looking for is DBCC SHRINKFILE(YourDataFileName, EMPTYFILE); where ...
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