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Column-Stores vs. Row-Stores: How Different Are They Really?

Summary: Column-stores outperform row-stores on analytics; vertical partitioning cannot bridge the gap. The paper dissects executor-level factors, showing gains from vectorized execution, compression, and a new join algorithm, arguing that realizing column-store benefits requires changes to both storage and the query engine. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID
4046
Venue
SIGMOD
Year
2008
Pagerank
0.00021716559
Overall Rank
497 | 96.55%
DOI
-

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 50 of 60 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
167 The Snowflake Elastic Data Warehouse 2016 SIGMOD 0.00039180521
459 Processing Analytical Queries over Encrypted Data 2013 VLDB 0.00022627746
704 Building Efficient Query Engines in a High-Level Language 2014 VLDB 0.00017900583
1,273 The Yin and Yang of Processing Data Warehousing Queries on GPU Devices 2013 VLDB 0.00012912938
1,470 Processing a Trillion Cells per Mouse Click 2012 VLDB 0.00011833779
1,588 Druid: A Real-time Analytical Data Store 2014 SIGMOD 0.00011239313
1,590 Column-oriented Database Systems 2009 VLDB 0.00011233838
1,653 Query Processing Techniques for Solid State Drives 2009 SIGMOD 0.00011003558
1,700 Bridging the Archipelago between Row-Stores and Column-Stores for Hybrid Workloads 2016 SIGMOD 0.00010858865
1,807 H2O: A Hands-free Adaptive Store 2014 SIGMOD 0.00010487796
1,863 Cheetah: A High Performance, Custom Data Warehouse on Top of MapReduce 2010 VLDB 0.00010286531
1,864 Relaxed Operator Fusion for In-Memory Databases: Making Compilation, Vectorization, and Prefetching Work Together At Last 2018 VLDB 0.00010280966
2,067 HippogriffDB: Balancing I/O and GPU Bandwidth in Big Data Analytics 2016 VLDB 9.6392739e-05
2,258 SQL Server Column Store Indexes 2011 SIGMOD 9.1678883e-05
2,311 On Improving User Response Times in Tableau 2015 SIGMOD 9.0539767e-05
2,657 An Analytic Data Engine for Visualization in Tableau 2011 SIGMOD 8.3616058e-05
2,772 Quickstep: A Data Platform Based on the Scaling-Up Approach 2018 VLDB 8.1401661e-05
2,791 Towards Demystifying Serverless Machine Learning Training 2021 SIGMOD 8.1206618e-05
2,882 Database Compression on Graphics Processors 2010 VLDB 7.9661218e-05
3,152 AnalyticDB: Real-time OLAP Database System at Alibaba Cloud 2019 VLDB 7.4711766e-05
3,208 Column-Oriented Storage Techniques for MapReduce 2011 VLDB 7.3781897e-05
3,305 Robust Query Processing in Co-Processor-accelerated Databases 2016 SIGMOD 7.2460965e-05
3,764 Read-Optimized Databases, In Depth 2008 VLDB 6.7797554e-05
4,012 Columnar Storage and List-based Processing for Graph Database Management Systems 2021 VLDB 6.5335884e-05
4,281 Maximizing Persistent Memory Bandwidth Utilization for OLAP Workloads 2021 SIGMOD 6.2940039e-05
4,445 The Impact of Columnar In-Memory Databases on Enterprise Systems: Implications of Eliminating Transaction-Maintained Aggregates 2014 VLDB 6.1808093e-05
4,642 Fast Scans on Key-Value Stores 2017 VLDB 6.0267293e-05
4,956 Dimensions Based Data Clustering and Zone Maps 2017 VLDB 5.8040891e-05
4,964 PS2: Parameter Server on Spark 2019 SIGMOD 5.7965988e-05
4,975 An Experimental Evaluation of Large Scale GBDT Systems 2019 VLDB 5.79026e-05
5,088 TCUDB: Accelerating Database with Tensor Processors 2022 SIGMOD 5.7072189e-05
5,113 Columnstore and B+ tree – Are Hybrid Physical Designs Important? 2018 SIGMOD 5.687445e-05
5,125 The Art of Balance: A RateupDBTM Experience of Building a CPU/GPU Hybrid Database Product 2021 VLDB 5.679423e-05
5,338 Fast In-Memory SQL Analytics on Typed Graphs 2017 VLDB 5.5629772e-05
5,562 A Deep Dive into Common Open Formats for Analytical DBMSs 2023 VLDB 5.4331334e-05
5,580 Teaching an Old Elephant New Tricks 2009 CIDR 5.4242682e-05
5,604 Design and Evaluation of Storage Organizations for Read-Optimized Main Memory Databases 2013 VLDB 5.4147933e-05
5,714 MCJoin: A Memory-Constrained Join for Column-Store Main-Memory Databases. 2012 SIGMOD 5.3578116e-05
6,666 Mainlining Databases: Supporting Fast Transactional Workloads on Universal Columnar Data File Formats 2021 VLDB 4.9691571e-05
6,803 Proteus: Autonomous Adaptive Storage for Mixed Workloads 2022 SIGMOD 4.9224958e-05
7,112 Wide Table Layout Optimization based on Column Ordering and Duplication 2017 SIGMOD 4.8275068e-05
7,128 Jigsaw: A Data Storage and Query Processing Engine for Irregular Table Partitioning 2021 SIGMOD 4.8230171e-05
7,209 GPU-accelerated data management under the test of time 2020 CIDR 4.7996023e-05
7,469 Bullion: A Column Store for Machine Learning 2025 CIDR 4.7204398e-05
8,357 Cubrick: Indexing Millions of Records per Second for Interactive Analytics 2016 VLDB 4.5373339e-05
8,396 Optimizing Declarative Graph Queries at Large Scale 2019 SIGMOD 4.5276541e-05
8,519 Extending Polaris to Support Transactions 2024 SIGMOD 4.494088e-05
8,774 Tiresias: Enabling Predictive Autonomous Storage and Indexing 2022 VLDB 4.4559995e-05
9,437 BlockJoin: Efficient Matrix Partitioning Through Joins 2017 VLDB 4.3425552e-05
9,908 Keep Your Distributed Data Warehouse Consistent at a Minimal Cost 2023 SIGMOD 4.2576943e-05
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 9 of 9 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank Cited Paper Year Venue Pagerank
21 C-Store: A Column-oriented DBMS 2005 VLDB 0.00086087497
35 MonetDB/X100: Hyper-Pipelining Query Execution 2005 CIDR 0.00076197749
80 Weaving Relations for Cache Performance 2001 VLDB 0.00055721729
131 Integrating Compression and Execution in Column-Oriented Database Systems 2006 SIGMOD 0.0004370331
464 A Case for Fractured Mirrors 2002 VLDB 0.0002245871
515 QPipe: A Simultaneously Pipelined Relational Query Engine 2005 SIGMOD 0.00021214633
710 Performance Tradeoffs in Read-Optimized Databases 2006 VLDB 0.00017765454
1,050 Buffering Database Operations for Enhanced Instruction Cache Performance 2004 SIGMOD 0.00014453896
2,795 Efficient Execution of Joins in a Star Schema 2002 SIGMOD 8.1128059e-05
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Semantically Similar Papers

Overall Rank Paper Year Venue Pagerank
5,580 Teaching an Old Elephant New Tricks 2009 CIDR 5.4242682e-05
1,700 Bridging the Archipelago between Row-Stores and Column-Stores for Hybrid Workloads 2016 SIGMOD 0.00010858865
5,604 Design and Evaluation of Storage Organizations for Read-Optimized Main Memory Databases 2013 VLDB 5.4147933e-05
1,949 Positional Update Handling in Column Stores 2010 SIGMOD 9.9864085e-05
21 C-Store: A Column-oriented DBMS 2005 VLDB 0.00086087497
131 Integrating Compression and Execution in Column-Oriented Database Systems 2006 SIGMOD 0.0004370331
4,445 The Impact of Columnar In-Memory Databases on Enterprise Systems: Implications of Eliminating Transaction-Maintained Aggregates 2014 VLDB 6.1808093e-05
710 Performance Tradeoffs in Read-Optimized Databases 2006 VLDB 0.00017765454
3,764 Read-Optimized Databases, In Depth 2008 VLDB 6.7797554e-05
1,590 Column-oriented Database Systems 2009 VLDB 0.00011233838