Public preview: String and binary columns in clustered columnstore indexes

String and binary columns with unlimited size are supported in clustered columnstore indexes in Azure SQL Database (premium tiers). Clustered columnstore indexes can be created on tables that have large string or binary types, such as NVARCHAR(MAX), VARCHAR(MAX), and VARBINARY(MAX).

The following code shows an example of a table that contains the NVARCHAR(MAX) column with a clustered columnstore index created on top of the table:

CREATE TABLE Logs (
    DateLogged datetime2,
    Type varchar(20),
    Data NVARCHAR(MAX),
    INDEX cci CLUSTERED COLUMNSTORE
)

Clustered columnstore indexes provide high compression (up to 10x) of data in string and binary columns.