Stack Overflow Demo Database Column Store Edition: Downloads And Links

Gett Itt

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If you want to download the database, here’s the magnet link for the torrent. I don’t have another means of distributing this; it’s too big of a file.

If you want the GitHub scripts to create and load data, head over here.

Info

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If you’re downloading the database, it’s about a 80 GB backup file, that needs to be restored to SQL Server 2017 or higher. It expands to a database that’s about 160 GB. It’s not the biggest database in the world, but it’s a good starting place to learn about column store. You can always make it bigger, if you want.

Current table row counts:

• Badges: 811,264,500
• Comments: 1,885,946,200
• Posts: 1,147,995,425
• Users: 273,307,375
• Votes: 4,439,806,603

For more information about the Schema, head over here.

Downloading vs. Building

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If you’re comfortable with a database of that size on your computer (compared to the hardware), then downloading is fine. The computers I use it on have 64-128 GB of RAM.

Some people may want to build their own and find a size that better fits their hardware, which is where the create and build scripts make more sense. I wouldn’t wanna see you trying to query tables of this size on a laptop with a VM admin amount of RAM (say 16GB or less).

Scripts To Help You Explore Column Store

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Great scripts to help you look at what SQL Server’s DMVs have to say about column store indexes live here: Columnstore Indexes Scripts Library

And of course, poke around this site for Joe Obbish’s posts about column store, along with Niko’s site for his material.

Thanks for reading!

Going Further

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If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love my training. I’m offering a 75% discount to my blog readers if you click from here. I’m also available for consulting if you just don’t have time for that and need to solve performance problems quickly.