Hekaton: SQL server's memory-optimized OLTP engine

Abstract

Hekaton is a new database engine optimized for memory resident data and OLTP workloads. Hekaton is fully integrated into SQL Server; it is not a separate system. To take advantage of Hekaton, a user simply declares a table memory optimized. Hekaton tables are fully transactional and durable and accessed using T-SQL in the same way as regular SQL Server tables. A query can reference both Hekaton tables and regular tables and a transaction can update data in both types of tables. T-SQL stored procedures that reference only Hekaton tables can be compiled into machine code for further performance improvements. The engine is designed for high concurrency. To achieve this it uses only latch-free data structures and a new optimistic, multiversion concurrency control technique. This paper gives an overview of the design of the Hekaton engine and reports some experimental results. Copyright © ACM.