A very interesting article indeed!

However, I think that you shouldn't compare query performance without any index in the conventional table.

If you add an index (code below) and rerun your query, your query performance will be about 1000 times better. (Yet, the space requirement will also increase remarkably.)

Rgds,

Pexi

CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX_Rainfall_Con_Date_Hour] ON [Rainfall_Con]

(

[Date] ASC,

[Hour] ASC,

[LocID] ASC,

[Rainfall] ASC

)WITH (

PAD_INDEX = OFF,

STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF,

SORT_IN_TEMPDB = OFF,

IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF,

DROP_EXISTING = OFF,

ONLINE = OFF,

ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON,

ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON)

ON [PRIMARY]