Column Stores Under the Hood

Row vs Columnar Layout showed why columnar files read fewer bytes. A columnar engine also compresses, skips blocks and processes values in batches. This section opens up PostgreSQL 18 1,289 's row-oriented heap and DuckDB 1.5.5 61,228 's columnar storage on the same data (demos/ch04/py/duck_build.py builds booknest.duckdb, sales mart included).

Subsections

• Row Store Layout
• Column Store Layout
• Why Columns Win Wide Scans
• The Vectorized Execution Model
• SIMD and Batch Processing
• Columnar Compression
• Zone Maps and Pruning
• Storage Model and Workload