Columnar Database Definition

Columnar Database

A columnar database is optimized for fast retrieval of columns of data, typically in analytical applications. Column-oriented storage for database tables is an important factor in analytic query performance because it drastically reduces the overall disk I/O requirements, and reduces the amount of data you need to load from disk.

Like other NoSQL databases, column-oriented databases are designed to scale “out” using distributed clusters of low-cost hardware to increase throughput, making them ideal for data warehousing and Big Data processing.