Columnar Storage
Columnar storage is a data storage technique where data is organized by columns rather than rows, optimizing for analytical queries that aggregate or filter specific columns across large datasets. It stores each column's data contiguously on disk, enabling efficient compression and faster read operations for analytical workloads. This approach contrasts with row-based storage, which is better suited for transactional processing.
Developers should use columnar storage when building data warehouses, business intelligence systems, or big data analytics platforms that require fast query performance on large volumes of data. It is ideal for scenarios involving complex aggregations, filtering, and scanning of specific columns, such as in financial reporting, log analysis, or machine learning feature engineering. Learning this is crucial for optimizing data-intensive applications where read-heavy analytical queries dominate over transactional updates.