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In-Memory OLTP in SQL Server is a powerful feature integrated into the SQL Server Engine. It’s designed to speed up transactional processing and data ingestion significantly. It’s well known for its high performance and benefits brought to business applications and Big Data solutions leveraging its lock-free and latch-free data structures. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how In-Memory OLTP can enhance the performance of your SQL Server applications, with practical examples of SQL code.
Understanding In-Memory OLTP
In-Memory OLTP, previously known as Hekaton, is a memory-optimized database engine integrated into the SQL Server engine, optimized for OLTP workloads. The data is stored in a memory-optimized data, which is both lock-free and latch-free, offering multi-version optimistic concurrency control. The data can be non-durable (Schema-only) or fully durable when it comes to transactions.
Example of the declaration of a memory-optimized table structure:
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CREATE TABLE dbo.SampleTable ( [Id] INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED HASH WITH (BUCKET_COUNT = 400000), [Name] NVARCHAR(50) NOT NULL, [CreatedOn] DATETIME2 NOT NULL )WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON, DURABILITY = SCHEMA_AND_DATA); |
Implementing In-Memory OLTP for Performance Improvement
Implementing In-Memory OLTP can drastically improve performance. However, it’s not a magical solution for every problem out there. There are specific scenarios where this technology can provide significant performance improvements, e.g., tables that are write-intensive or situation where you need to avoid locking/blocking scenarios.
Example of inserting data in the memory-optimized table:
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INSERT INTO dbo.SampleTable VALUES (1, 'Name1', GETDATE()); INSERT INTO dbo.SampleTable VALUES (2, 'Name2', GETDATE()); |
Advantage of Natively Compiled Stored Procedures
Natively-compiled stored procedures are a unique feature of In-Memory OLTP that allows faster data manipulation and access. Because they are compiled to native code, they give a significant performance boost to your data-intensive applications.
Example of a memory-optimized stored procedure:
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CREATE PROCEDURE d<a href="mailto:bo.usp_SampleProcedure @Id" >bo.usp_SampleProcedure @Id</a> INT, @Name NVARCHAR(50) WITH NATIVE_COMPILATION, SCHEMABINDING, EXECUTE AS OWNER AS BEGIN ATOMIC WITH (TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL = SNAPSHOT, LANGUAGE = N'us_english') INSERT INTO dbo.SampleTable(Id, Name, CreatedOn) VALUES (@Id, @Name, GETDATE()); END; |
Conclusion
Implementing In-Memory OLTP in your SQL Server applications can significantly enhance their performance by avoiding traditional locking/blocking scenarios and leveraging memory-optimized tables and natively compiled stored procedures. Remember, careful planning and testing are crucial for successful implementation.