ColumnStore Enhancements

SQL Server 2014 improves support for data warehouses with enhancements to its ColumnStore technology. The improvements allow updating of tables, which enable near real-time data analysis, and provide more compatibility with standard SQL commands and table structures to improve access to existing data. The enhancements also provide support for disaster recovery and data compression options that reduce storage requirements. However, leveraging some new features may require rebuilding tables and making potential design changes to queries and access methods for existing reports and business intelligence (BI) tools.

ColumnStore Technology Supports Data Warehouses

ColumnStore, introduced in SQL Server 2012 as xVelocity ColumnStore, is designed for use on data warehouses and data marts, where large amounts of data collected from operations are queried to help track business performance, spot important trends and patterns, and make business decisions.

ColumnStore indexes are different from traditional row-oriented indexes. They function by organizing and optimizing data by column, as opposed to row, and assume that most large queries are focused on a limited number of columns, rather than all columns in a row. ColumnStore indexes compress column data on unique key values, which reduces memory requirements and speeds up certain forms of queries, such as full table scans that are commonly used when querying data warehouses.