Niko Neugebauer does not like the MERGE statement when applied to columnstore indexes:
This blog post is focused on the MERGE statement for the Columnstore Indexes, or as I call it – the worst enemy of the Columnstore Indexes. It is extremely difficult to imagine some statement or way of making the worst out of the Columnstore Indexes, if not the infamous MERGE statement. Why ? Because it is not only making Columnstore Indexes perform slow, it will make them perform MUCH SLOWER then any Rowstore Indexes. Yes, you have read right – slower then ANY_ROWSTORE_INDEXES. In fact, this should be a hint that one should apply to the Merge statement, when it is executed against Columnstore Indexes! 🙂
I decide to dedicate a whole blog post on this matter, mainly to warn people of this pretty problematic statement – I hope not to see it being used for Columnstore Indexes in the future!
There is very little room for misunderstanding in Niko’s post.