The problem isn&#x27;t the technology here. The problem is that they were using a replica of the OLTP database for reporting purposes.<p>OLTP and OLAP are hugely different workloads. A good 3NF (or close to it) schema that you&#x27;ll find in an OLTP database is designed for fast writes with minimal locking; it fits well with the workload of OLTP.<p>If you&#x27;re reporting on that data and performing analytical queries, then your schema needs to reflect that and optimize for large reads without much concern around lock contention for the primary workload.<p>I am not opposing the suggestion of a columnstore database, as we utilize these extensively with our clients. There is simply a much larger problem in the specified example. 15B rows is not too big a deal in an RDBMS for an analytical workload.