- Hekaton is Microsoft SQL Server's in-memory OLTP engine that allows for hybrid deployments with both memory-optimized and disk-based tables. - It introduces features like natively compiled stored procedures, in-memory hash indexes, and memory-optimized tables to improve performance of OLTP workloads. - The in-memory hash indexes used by Hekaton improve performance of queries compared to traditional disk-based indexes, though they have some limitations in functionality.