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Memory-Optimized Indexing Strategy

Kunal Karoth has some advice for creating memory-optimized indexes:

To further optimize your queries that do point lookups on your memory-optimized table using an equality operator (=), consider using a Hash index. Hash indexes also optimize insert operations and aid database recovery time. As mentioned earlier, a Hash index uses a hash table internally to keep track of the index keys. The hashing function uses all the key(s) specified at the index creation time to create a mapping between the index key column(s) and the corresponding hash bucket. Hence, it is important that you specify all the index key columns that are part of the hash index, during the lookup in your query.

As with any hashing technique, collisions will occur. A hash collision occurs when two or more index keys map to the same hash bucket. In general, having a limited number of collisions is expected and is fine. It is only when the number of collisions become excessive, it may noticeably begin to impact your query performance. Your aim should be to keep the number of collisions as low as possible. You may experience a higher number of collisions either because: –

  • There are many duplicate index key column values in the table and/or

  • The number of hash buckets for your Hash index are under provisioned.

There’s some helpful information here if you are new to In-Memory OLTP.