Data warehousing
SQL Server contains a number of special optimizations that speed the execution of data warehouse queries. A data warehouse is a large database that usually has one large fact table and a number of smaller dimension tables that contain detail information referenced by the fact table. These are typically called star schema or snowflake schema (snowflake applies to dimension tables that reference other dimension tables). These kinds of schemas are often used to store large amounts of raw data that is then processed to help discover information to help a company learn something about its business.
Data warehouses often try to make each row in the fact table as small as possible because the table is so large. Large data, such as strings, ...
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