There are many features in the database and all of them are super useful. But on this day, I chose to go with the latest and probably the greatest feature introduced in the oracle database 12.1.0.2-In Memory Column Store.

From a long time, there has been discussions about how a database should be using column based storage to increase the performance. Traditional method of using the database is row-based mechanism. But as good it may sound to use a column based mechanism, it is not that easy to implement it because the way DML statements work, it’s better for them to use  a row-based approach. And that’s where, the superb genius developers of Oracle Corp came up with the feature- In Memory Column Store(IMCS). The IMCS allows the oracle database to do the DML’s still using the traditional row-based approach but for data selection(and that too selectively for the chosen table or tables), the data of the table is loaded into a new memory structure that’s arranges the  data of the table in a columnar format. With this feature, when one has to access really large database tables and use them in reports, which with analytical indexes can take anywhere from minutes to hours, the same work can be completed in few seconds.

Here is a video demonstrating the power of In-memory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF-h26iKTYY

If you want to know more about the IMCS, you may want to watch this presentation,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF-h26iKTYY

And of course, last but certainly not the least, read about it from the Oracle Documentation,

http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/ADMIN/memory.htm#GUID-BFA53515-7643-41E5-A296-654AB4A9F9E7

Don’t forget to check Maria Colgan’s excellent presentations on the same topic at Oracle University’s learning stream website – http://education.oracle.com/streams

Thanks to Tim for bringing this excellent idea of saying thanks to OTN! And thank you so much OTN!!