Columnar Database

As the illustration above shows. A typical relational database stores its data in row form. A single row for a transaction, for instance, would contain the fields date, customer, price, product_sku and so on.

A columnar database, however, stores each of these fields in separate columns.

OLAP means online analytical processing.

Three Main Benefits Of Storing Your Data In Columns

• Columnar databases have higher read efficiency.
• Columnar databases also compress better than row-based relational databases
• The final benefit is that compression and dense-packing in columnar databases free up space