SQL Server introduced columnar storage in version 2012. Only NCCIs were supported. This means that you still need to have the original row storage, either organized as a heap or as a clustered index (CI). There are many other limitations, including the following:
- Nonclustered columnstore index only
- One per table
- Must be partition-aligned
- Table becomes read-only (partition switching allowed)
- Unsupported types
- Decimals greater than 18 digits
- Binary, Image, CLR (including Spatial, HierarchyId)
- (N)varchar(max), XML, Text, Ntext
- Uniqueidentifier, Rowversion, SQL_Variant
- Date/time types greater than 8 bytes
SQL Server 2014 introduced clustered columnstore indexes (CCI). This means that the original ...
