Hekaton (also known as SQL Server In-Memory OLTP) is an

in-memory database An in-memory database (IMDB, or main memory database system (MMDB) or memory resident database) is a database management system that primarily relies on main memory for computer data storage. It is contrasted with database management systems that e ...

for

OLTP In online transaction processing (OLTP), information systems typically facilitate and manage transaction-oriented applications. This is contrasted with online analytical processing. The term "transaction" can have two different meanings, both of w ...

workloads built into

Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which ...

. Hekaton was designed in collaboration with Microsoft Research and was released in SQL Server 2014. Traditional RDBMS systems were designed when memory resources were expensive, and were optimized for disk storage. Hekaton is instead optimized for a working set stored entirely in main memory, but is still accessible via

T-SQL Transact-SQL (T-SQL) is Microsoft's and Sybase's proprietary extension to the SQL (Structured Query Language) used to interact with relational databases. T-SQL expands on the SQL standard to include procedural programming, local variables, var ...

like normal tables. It is fundamentally different from the "DBCC PINTABLE" feature in earlier SQL Server versions. Hekaton was announced at the

Professional Association for SQL Server PASS (formerly known as the Professional Association for SQL Server) was a global community for data professionals who use the Microsoft data platform. An independent, non-profit, user-run association, PASS was founded in 1999 with funds from Micro ...

(PASS) conference 2012.

References

Databases Microsoft database software {{database-stub