Index Of Fast And Furious 4

[Prewitt Howells]

Columnstore indexes are indexes which you place on regular tables in a database. Like regular indexes, their purpose is to speed up queries. However, regular B-tree indexes are ideal for finding specific rows in the blink of an eye, while columnstore indexes are optimized for retrieving large volumes of data and aggregating those rows. This means regular indexes are typically used in OLTP scenarios, while columnstore indexes are better suited for OLAP scenarios.

Columnstore indexes differ from regular indexes in how they are built. As the name suggests, they apply columnar storage. This allows for much better compression of the data. Typically, a 10x compression ratio can be achieved, but this depends to a large extent on the type and distribution of the data. Because the data footprint is much smaller, more data can be read into memory to satisfy queries.

Both tables ending in _CCI have a clustered columnstore index. In the data column, you can clearly see their storage footprint is significantly smaller than that of their counterparts (the original tables). A smaller storage footprint means less IO from storage, which means faster queries and more data to fit into memory.

As mentioned, columnstore indexes store data in a columnar fashion. For each column, only the distinct list of unique values for the entire column is stored. For example, if you have a table with 1,000,000 customers with a column storing for country, a regular table would store 1,000,000 values for the countries. Columnar storage, by contrast, only requires the unique list, which is probably no longer than 200 countries. This is how columnstore indexes can achieve much higher data compression.

Another advantage of columnar storage is that, in case you only need a couple of columns for a query, you can simply read just those columns. In a regular table, you would have to read all the columns.

Internally, the data is organized in groups of about one million rows which are then compressed together. Inside each group of rows, only the minimum and maximum value for each column are kept.

When a query filters on a column, the minimum and maximum values can be used to determine whether the entire group of rows can be skipped, which leads to further performance improvements. The screenshot below shows information about a query for which 47 segments have been skipped. Instead of 51 million rows, only 4 million rows have to be read!

A final performance improvement can be achieved by using batch mode. When a query runs in batch mode, the operators in the execution plan will operate on batches of about 1,000 rows instead of on a single row. Needless to say, this speeds up queries tremendously. Keep in mind, though, that not all operators can be run in batch mode and that depending on your query (and the version of SQL Server you have), the query may need to run in row mode.

For a query to run in batch mode, at least one columnstore index must be present on the table. However, in SQL Server 2019 it will be possible to use batch mode for regular tables with regular indexes if the optimizer deems it beneficial.

Columnstore indexes are ideal for data warehousing. Typically, you don't want to create columnstore indexes in an extremely volatile transactional database, as updating and deleting rows comes at a high cost. Whenever your data is at rest for a longer period of time, columnstore indexes are preferred. Because there is quite some overhead involved, it makes sense to create columnstore indexes only for larger tables with at least a few millions of rows.

Without columnstore index, this query runs for about 90 seconds on a table of 33 million rows. With columnstore index, the query only takes about 4 seconds. The execution plan shows the relative costs:

Koen is a data professional working at AE. He helps organizations to get insight in their data and to improve their analytics solutions. Koen has over a decade of experience in developing data warehouses, models and reports using the Microsoft data platform. Since 2017 Koen is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP. He has a blog at , writes articles for MSSQLTips.com and is a frequent speaker at SQL Server events.

Goto [ Index ]Some games are designed for the feel of a particular genre or game world, some for a certain degree of cinematic realism, and others for a mix of both. Savage Worlds, on the other hand, is designed for a style of play - "Fast, Furious, Fun." The focus is on simplicity to make it easy to run and fast to play, but without sacrificing all those crunchy bits that make a gamingsession feel like a game rather than a night of improvisational theater.

At it's heart Savage Worlds is an engine which seems to fit those settings where the heroes are slightly larger than life, but still vulnerable to a mook with a knife, and the stories are action oriented. If I had to pick one word, it would be Pulp. In other words, it'll work for most games and settings that the gaming public has played in. On the other hand, at 144 pages, itonly includes those things that remain the same for most settings.

Does it leave critical areas to GM fiat?Does it allow for adequate and timely character advancement and growth?Can it run combats involving high powered characters without bogging down due to ever larger handfuls of dice or complicated character write-ups?Will a player character eventually become so powerful that the pistol wielding alley way mugger with the drop on him is of nomore concern than a gnat?

After reading the Test Drive rules (available for free atwww.peginc.com/savage_worlds.htm) a few times I had my doubts, but knowing that judging a game by how it reads is like judging a video game by waching a trailer, I decided to run a few sessions before coming to any conclusions. I was pleasantly surprised. In 22 years of gaming I've never seen this many good ideas in one place. After buying the book and trying the full rules, I have to say that the Test Drive doesn't do them justice. This is one of those games where you have to play it to appreciate how much loving care was put into it. Manyof the things that looked like they wouldn't feel right when I read the book actually worked great in play.

Our gaming group ranges from 1 to 22 years experience (13 to 34 years of age) and while we like to roleplay, we also take great glee in action scenes and the time honored tradition of number crunching during character generation. As the GM I'm a thirtysomething with a wife, kids and a house payment to make. When it comes time to relax I don't care to spend a lot of time dickering around with rules, prepping a game session, when Icould be playing with my kids, my wife, or my Xbox. When we game, every player character is in danger, overt or covert, every session (that's the goal anyway.) Roleplaying occursduring important scenes where lives are at stake, not as characters shoot the breeze while the GM waxes poetic about the scenery. I realize some people may not play that way, braggingabout how entire sessions go by without them making a die roll, and that's fine - I'm not here to tell you how boring your sessions are ;) All kidding aside, my point is that if a gamesystem can handle our style of number crunching combat mongery, chances are it can handle a more roleplaying heavy style of play as well. Why do I mention all of this? Because SavageWorlds handles our style of play with ease. Climactic battles that used to take the entire session now take half an hour. Fast, furious and fun? You bet.

I won't go into the basics of the system, that information can be found in the Test Drive rules mentioned earlier. Betteryet, check out the "Making of" series of articles found on the same page mentioned above. They're way down at the bottom of the page, and they're an interesting look into what sort ofthinking went into making Savage Worlds - perhaps the best indicator of whether this game is for you. On the other hand, I will cover what's not in the Test Drive rules so you know whatto expect for your hard earned money.

It's a hardcover book with pages in various shades of black and white. Interested parties can sample the cover at the website. I'm not much on art myself, but the art provided seems more than adequate. The book lays flat on the table without having to crack the spine, which is much appreciated, but the character sheet is too close to the binding to photocopy well, which is not. Fortunately, most of what you may want to copy is available in the form of pdf files on the website.

There's eight pages of introduction and the aforementioned Test Drive rules. I'm not sure why the Test Drive rules are in here, those pages could have been used on more gear or more guidelines to the GM on how to bend the rules without getting into trouble. These pages are the only fat, if they can be called that, in the entire book. The rest is nothing but meat.

Following that is 24 pages of character generation. The section includes examples of 11 different races, 80 edges (including professional and weird edges not included in the Test Drive), 35 hindrances, the attributes and skills, etc. along with all the explanations. Character creation is point based, involving small numbers, and even the most dithering player should be able to create a character from nothing more than a concept in about 30 minutes. GMs tend to be less picky and could do the same thing in about 5 minutes.

The next chapter contains 15 pages of gear to equip characters with. It covers a little bit of everything, presumably to give the GM something "close" to base his or her own creations off of. As a tiny example of the breadth of material covered, you'll find stats for: the chain hauberk, the chainsaw, a laser machine gun,handcuffs, an SUV, the M1A1 Abrams tank, the P-51 Mustang, and a Spanish galleon. Like I said, a little bit of everything. While not exhaustive, there's enough here to start a campaign ina variety of historical settings, fantasy, modern day horror, and so on.

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