SQL Server Accelerates Complex Queries

SQL Server 2012’s relational database engine includes a new option for improving query performance on complex combinations of data. The feature, referred to as a columnstore index, may prove most useful for data warehouses that contain data collected from operations to help track business performance, spot important trends and patterns, and make business decisions. When used with a data warehouse, the columnstore index provides more rapid reporting and analysis of data while also reducing the amount of preprocessing that IT departments must do to make queries of large data warehouses perform well. This design is intended to simplify data warehouse creation and maintenance and reduce costs. However, the columnstore index is not ideal for every database.

Columnstore Optimized for Rapid Queries

Like other relational databases, SQL Server stores data in tables where each row represents a specific record (such as a sales transaction) and each column represents an attribute of the record (such a customer identifier, product identifiers, and date and time of the transaction).