Recently Quentin Clark announced SQL Server 2014 during TechEd North America. One of the key features to be announced was the in-memory online transaction processing (OLTP) engine, which would complement the in-memory technologies which have been available in the data warehouse and analytics engines in SQL Server 2012, and integrated into PowerPivot in Excel 2013.
During the announcement Quentin highlighted how Edgenet were using In-Memory OLTP to gain real-time access to retail product data with in-memory OLTP. At TechEd Europe, it’s a timely reminder to look back to a story we highlighted first at PASS Summit 2012, in which bwin announced the benefits that they were gaining from using In-Memory OLTP – at that time, still under it’s codename ‘Project Hekaton’.
Bwin is the largest regulated online gaming company in the world, and their success depends on positive customer experiences. They had recently upgraded some of their systems to SQL Server 2012 – a story you can read here. Bwin had already gained significant in-memory benefit in their data warehouse using in-memory column store, for example – a large report that used to take 17 minutes to render now takes only three seconds.
Given the benefits, they had seen with in-memory technologies, they were keen to trial the technology preview of In-memory OLTP. Prior to using In-memory, their online gaming systems were handling about 15,000 requests per second, a huge number for most companies. However, bwin needed to be agile and stay at ahead of the competition and so they wanted access to the latest technology speed.
Using In-memory OLTP bwin were hoping they could at least double the number of transactions. They were ‘pretty amazed’ to see that the fastest tests so far have scaled to 250,000 transactions per second. So how fast is SQL Server 2014 In-memory OLTP or as it was then Project ‘Hekaton’ – just ask Rick Kutschera, the Database Engineering Manager at bwin – in his words it’s ‘Wicked Fast’!
Watch ‘bwin Wins with SQL Server 2014 below and download SQL Server 2014 CTP1 today!