Columnstore indexes
Columnstore indexes were introduced by SQL Server 2012 with many limitations. Most of them are gone now and columnstore indexes became very popular in data warehouse applications. Columnstore index uses segments as a store unit rather than data pages. Columnstore indexes could be both clustered and non-clustered.
When a columnstore index is created, a table is divided into row groups--sections containing approximately a million records. Every row group is divided into segments. Segment is the storage unit containing data of one column in one row group. Data in segments is strongly compressed. This is a very good approach when many aggregation queries are issued, for example, for reporting purposes or data cube processing. ...
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