Last week was an exciting week for the SQL Server team, as one of our favorite events happened – PASS Summit. If you attended PASS, you probably heard a ton about the latest version of SQL Server 2014.
One of the key drivers of SQL 2014’s design was the in-memory technology that is built into the product. These capabilities and the way they were designed are a key differentiator for SQL Server 2014. Recently we discussed how using SQL Server 2014’s in-memory technology can have a dramatic impact on your business – speeding transactions, queries, and insights. Today let’s delve a little deeper into our in-memory solution and our unique approach to its design.
We built in-memory technology into SQL Server from the ground up, making it the first in-memory database that works across all workloads. These in-memory capabilities are available not only on-premises, but also in the cloud when you use SQL Server in an Azure VM or use the upcoming in-memory columnstore capabilities within Azure SQL Database. So just what makes our approach so unique? This video describes it well.
We have five core design points for SQL Server in-memory. These are:
- It’s built-in. If you know SQL Server, you’re ready to go. You don’t need new development tools, to rewrite the entire app, or learn new APIs.
- It increases speed and throughput. SQL Server’s in-memory OLTP design removes database contention with lock and latch-free table architecture while maintaining 100 percent data durability. This means you can take advantage of all your compute resources in parallel, for more concurrent users.
- It’s flexible. Your entire database doesn’t need to be in-memory. You can choose to store hot data in-memory and cold data on disk, while still being able to access both with a single query. This give you the ability to optimize new or existing hardware.
- It’s easy to implement. The new migration advisory built right into SQL Server Management Studio lets you easily decide what to migrate to memory.
- It’s workload-optimized. In-memory OLTP is optimized for faster transactions, enhanced in-memory ColumnStore gives you faster queries and reports, and in-memory built into Excel and Analysis Services speeds analytics.
All of this combined leads to up to 30x faster transactions, over 100x faster queries and reporting, and easy management of millions of rows of data in Excel. Think about what this can do for your business.
Learn more about SQL Server 2014 in-memory, or try SQL Server 2014 now.