Mar
1
2010
Tables, tables, tables
Author: Jeremy SmythSo, what’s a temporary table? or an in-memory table? or a pivot table?
An in-memory table is a table in some platforms that’s stored entirely in memory. These don’t really exist in MS SQL, although you could say that it is a table that’s been entirely cached, and so doesn’t result in any physical (hard disk) reads when queried. In earlier versions, the DBCC PINTABLE command allowed the “pinning” of tables in memory, but this was deprecated in SQL Server 2005.
Often, a table-valued variable, @tablename, might be stored in memory (although this is not guaranteed), and declared in a batch or function, with no persistence.
A temporary table is a table that will be automatically dropped when it’s no longer needed, usually when the creating session is terminated. In MS SQL, they begin with a # (or two hashes if they’re global temporary tables, shared between multiple sessions), and are often created with a SELECT INTO #TEMPTABLE … style query.
A pivot table is a special form of query where the values in several rows are summarised, “pivoted” on an axis, and become columns, where the summary data then becomes the rows. Frequently this happens where you’ve rows sorted on dates; these may then be “pivoted” so you end up with a column for January, one for February, one for March, etc.
Tags: MySQL, Performance, SQL Server
