One of the biggest challenges when researching a new technology is determining where to start. A typical SQL Server installation could easily have hundreds of tables. Examining each one by hand to determine which would benefit from conversion, is a daunting challenge. This is where the AMR Tool comes into play.
Short for Analyze, Migrate, Report, the AMR tool consists of three components. The first component is the Management Data Warehouse. This is a relational database, hosted inside SQL Server, which is used for logging performance metadata for another database instance. Generally speaking this is installed on a separate machine, often just a test server or laptop.
A set of lightweight data collectors are attached to the database being examined. These collectors send dump the raw information into the aforementioned Management Data Warehouse.
Finally there are the reports themselves. These examine tables and stored procedures for two criteria: easy of migration and expected gains. Here is an example from the AMR announcement,
This concludes our coverage of SQL Server 2014’s In-Memory OLTP.