I got into a debate recently with someone about the In-Memory OLTP tables (formerly Hekaton) feature that was released with SQL Server 2014. This person asked if anyone was actually using the technology, given all the limitations that were placed on these structures in this first release.

I've had quite a few people actually get upset with Microsoft releasing a "feature" that doesn't just work as a replacement for the regular tables in SQL Server. They feel that Microsoft should have spent more time working to make the transition to these tables seemless, perhaps not releasing in-Memory tables until SQL Server 2016.

I feel differently. I think that Microsoft should get the technology working and stable, and then release it. Even if it has limitations, I'd like to see an implementation available early and give companies the chance to see how it performs in real world workloads. If you can't workaround the limitations, then you can't use it, but then does it matter if the feature is available in 2014 or 2016? I'm not sure it does.

We would really like to publish more guidance here, and help people understand the feature better. If anyone is out there actually using Hekaton in production, or has a development project underway that should get to production soon, we'd like to contact you and work out a way to publish information. You're welcome to write an article, or we can write one for you with a little interview time, either way is fine; we'd just like to get some practical, real world information out for everyone to learn from.

Please contact us if you're using In-Memory OLTP tables and natively compiled stored procedures.