Deleting Documents and implications on storage space

Question

I have a need to generate documents and send them to a email address. Once the document has been sent I don't actually care about the generated document, oh and it has to be a document, formatted HTML emails don't meet the requirements.

Because the documents need to be templated I'd like to set up a library with a default document template that uses smart so that I can create a new item in the library using the API, set the metadata for the document and have the content set how I need it for this document instance.

I'd then attach the file to a email and send it.

Once the email is sent I'd like to delete the item from the library to make sure I'm not storing things I don't need to.

The question is will SharePoint manage this deletion properly and ensure that my content DB doesn't grow due to documents that have been deleted?

Answer 1

Documents deleted from a library continue to live in the site Recycle Bin, and as such continue to occupy storage space.

Once they are removed or expired from the bin however, they are cleaned from the content table. Traces might remain for example in the Change logs or Audit logs, but these are either expired automatically or can be cleaned up. Your actual database files will eventually recover the released blocks in SQL.

So, yes, deletion will be handled properly.