Stack Overflow Demo Database Column Store Edition: Downloads And Links

Gett Itt


If you want to download the database, here’s the magnet link for the torrent. I don’t have another means of distributing this; it’s too big of a file.

If you want the GitHub scripts to create and load data, head over here.

Info


If you’re downloading the database, it’s about a 80 GB backup file, that needs to be restored to SQL Server 2017 or higher. It expands to a database that’s about 160 GB. It’s not the biggest database in the world, but it’s a good starting place to learn about column store. You can always make it bigger, if you want.

Current table row counts:

  • Badges: 811,264,500
  • Comments: 1,885,946,200
  • Posts: 1,147,995,425
  • Users: 273,307,375
  • Votes: 4,439,806,603

For more information about the Schema, head over here.

Downloading vs. Building


If you’re comfortable with a database of that size on your computer (compared to the hardware), then downloading is fine. The computers I use it on have 64-128 GB of RAM.

Some people may want to build their own and find a size that better fits their hardware, which is where the create and build scripts make more sense. I wouldn’t wanna see you trying to query tables of this size on a laptop with a VM admin amount of RAM (say 16GB or less).

Scripts To Help You Explore Column Store


Great scripts to help you look at what SQL Server’s DMVs have to say about column store indexes live here: Columnstore Indexes Scripts Library

And of course, poke around this site for Joe Obbish’s posts about column store, along with Niko’s site for his material.

Thanks for reading!

Going Further


If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love my training. I’m offering a 75% discount to my blog readers if you click from here. I’m also available for consulting if you just don’t have time for that and need to solve performance problems quickly.



3 thoughts on “Stack Overflow Demo Database Column Store Edition: Downloads And Links

  1. Erik, it would be possible to share the torrent file directly from the blog too? not only provide the magnet link (like Brent does with the StackOverflow DB on his blog)… The reason is when i’m trying to use the magnet, it shows 0 sources available to obtain for the torrent file

    1. Hi Luis! Updated the first sentence with a link to the torrent file. I’ve got a seedbox and my home server seeding, so you should get decent speeds.

      Happy downloading!

  2. schweet
    im the only one on your torrent now, but nice outgoing cps

    Am I the only one that noticed that many CS DW queries run slower that rowstore?

Comments are closed.