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Diving Into Columnstore Index Scans

Hugo Kornelis continues a series of posts on index scans:

The Columnstore Index Scan is not really an actual operator. You can encounter it in graphical execution plans in SSMS (and other tools), but if you look at the underlying XML of the execution plan, you will see that it is either an Index Scan or a Clustered Index Scan operator.

SQL Server currently supports three types of index storage: rowstore, columnstore, and memory-optimized. Indexes of each of those types can be the target of an Index Scan or Clustered Index Scan, as indicated by the Storage property. When the Storage property is RowStore or MemoryOptimized, then the normal icon for (clustered) index scan is use, but when Storage is ColumnStore than SSMS (and other tools) choose to show a different icon instead.

Click through for more details.