Microsoft Corp. has made its Azure SQL in-memory capabilities generally available, enabling rapid and advanced data analytics atop of its cloud service.

In-memory refers to data being stored in the RAM as a way of accelerating database performance, as it allows information to be accessed much more rapidly than traditional databases can do when they have to pull that data from the storage arrays to the processor. Microsoft said that it’s now offering in-memory support to users of Azure SQL with Premium database tier subscriptions, and is promising a big performance boost to customers who do.

“In-memory technology helps optimize the performance of transactional (OLTP), analytics (OLAP), as well as mixed workloads (HTAP),” Rohan Kumar, general manager of Microsoft’s Database Systems group, said in a blog post. “These technologies allow you to achieve phenomenal performance with Azure SQL Database—75,000 transactions per second for order processing (11X [performance] gain) and reduced query execution time from 15 seconds to 0.26 (57X [performance gain]).”

Kumar added that customers can use Azure SQL’s in-memory capabilities to power their way through workloads at no additional cost. So, for example, customers on a P2 database plan will be able to see nine times and 10 times improvements in transactions and analytics queries, without needing to pay any more fees.

Azure SQL’s new in-memory capabilities are based on several technologies, including in-memory OLTP (online transaction processing), which increases data throughput to enable higher-speed trading and more rapid data ingestion from Internet of Things’ sources.

A second technology is called clustered columnstore indexes, which forgo the time-consuming “extract, transform, load” data handling process and are able to reduce data storage footprints by up to 10 times, thereby accelerating reporting and analytics jobs, Kumar explained.

Non-clustered Columnstore Indexes for Hybrid Transactional and Analytical Processing gain real-time insights into your business by querying the operational database directly, without the need to run an expensive ETL process and wait for the data warehouse to be populated. “Non-clustered Columnstore indexes allow very fast execution of analytics queries on the OLTP database, while reducing the impact on the operational workload,” he said.

Microsoft’s update comes as rival firm SAP SE is planning the launch of its own database later this month. On Nov. 30, SAP will release HANA 2, a revamped version of its in-memory computing platform that comes with new artificial intelligence algorithms and “bring-your-own-language” capabilities that should enable developers to build and deploy a new breed of intelligent applications.

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