Columnstore indexes are a powerful tool for storing analytic data directly in SQL Server. This feature has improved in every version of SQL Server since their inception over ten years ago, and SQL Server 2025 is no exception!
The newest enhancements are laser-focused on business continuity and performance. Ordered clustered columnstore indexes, ordered non-clustered columnstore indexes, and database/file shrink operations are all given significant boosts that are worth the time to introduce and learn.
In this article we will dive into each of these changes, how they impact columnstore workloads in SQL Server, and demonstrate their operation.
Ordered Non-Clustered Columnstore