First introduced in SQL Server 2012, columnstore indexes can give you major performance gains -- provided you have the right workloads. Here's how columnstore indexes work and what types of data work ...

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The InfoQ trends reports provide a snapshot of emerging software technology and ideas. We create the reports and accompanying graphs to aid software engineers and architects in evaluating what trends ...

Database troubleshooting is not for the faint of heart, especially when it comes to troubleshooting locking and blocking problems. Sometimes the elephant in the room is actually a rhino, a problem ...

In an earlier tip I discussed how indexes can speed up processing. It's only fair that I also talk about when indexes don't help. First: Because indexes don't always help but do always increase the ...

The indexes on a the tables of a large database make a huge difference in its performance and utility. Without an index, locating a single record in a large table can take several seconds; with the ...

While SQL Server 2008 was little more than a service-pack level upgrade, the 2012 version of Microsoft’s database has a boatload of new features and delivers solid performance improvements.