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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
4047
Venue
SIGMOD
Year
2008
Pagerank
0.00021705611
Overall Rank
496 | 96.56%
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 0.00039408116
455 Processing Analytical Queries over Encrypted Data 2013 VLDB 0.00022736946
701 Building Efficient Query Engines in a High-Level Language 2014 VLDB 0.00017893039
1,271 The Yin and Yang of Processing Data Warehousing Queries on GPU Devices 2013 VLDB 0.00012900735
1,470 Processing a Trillion Cells per Mouse Click 2012 VLDB 0.00011827274
1,588 Druid: A Real-time Analytical Data Store 2014 SIGMOD 0.00011232949
1,590 Column-oriented Database Systems 2009 VLDB 0.00011230525
1,635 Query Processing Techniques for Solid State Drives 2009 SIGMOD 0.00011059682
1,697 Bridging the Archipelago between Row-Stores and Column-Stores for Hybrid Workloads 2016 SIGMOD 0.00010859294
1,801 H2O: A Hands-free Adaptive Store 2014 SIGMOD 0.00010485628
1,865 Relaxed Operator Fusion for In-Memory Databases: Making Compilation, Vectorization, and Prefetching Work Together At Last 2018 VLDB 0.00010271333
1,945 Cheetah: A High Performance, Custom Data Warehouse on Top of MapReduce 2010 VLDB 0.0001000706
2,072 HippogriffDB: Balancing I/O and GPU Bandwidth in Big Data Analytics 2016 VLDB 9.6300019e-05
2,262 SQL Server Column Store Indexes 2011 SIGMOD 9.1629311e-05
2,318 On Improving User Response Times in Tableau 2015 SIGMOD 9.04679e-05
2,663 An Analytic Data Engine for Visualization in Tableau 2011 SIGMOD 8.3532571e-05
2,777 Quickstep: A Data Platform Based on the Scaling-Up Approach 2018 VLDB 8.1346418e-05
2,795 Towards Demystifying Serverless Machine Learning Training 2021 SIGMOD 8.1135606e-05
2,890 Database Compression on Graphics Processors 2010 VLDB 7.9586083e-05
3,153 AnalyticDB: Real-time OLAP Database System at Alibaba Cloud 2019 VLDB 7.4706916e-05
3,193 Column-Oriented Storage Techniques for MapReduce 2011 VLDB 7.4073719e-05
3,307 Robust Query Processing in Co-Processor-accelerated Databases 2016 SIGMOD 7.2391191e-05
3,761 Read-Optimized Databases, In Depth 2008 VLDB 6.7777865e-05
4,017 Columnar Storage and List-based Processing for Graph Database Management Systems 2021 VLDB 6.5276062e-05
4,269 Maximizing Persistent Memory Bandwidth Utilization for OLAP Workloads 2021 SIGMOD 6.2950779e-05
4,445 The Impact of Columnar In-Memory Databases on Enterprise Systems: Implications of Eliminating Transaction-Maintained Aggregates 2014 VLDB 6.1754623e-05
4,639 Fast Scans on Key-Value Stores 2017 VLDB 6.0229334e-05
4,924 An Experimental Evaluation of Large Scale GBDT Systems 2019 VLDB 5.8211961e-05
4,954 Dimensions Based Data Clustering and Zone Maps 2017 VLDB 5.8058349e-05
4,972 PS2: Parameter Server on Spark 2019 SIGMOD 5.7894524e-05
5,089 TCUDB: Accelerating Database with Tensor Processors 2022 SIGMOD 5.7017353e-05
5,114 Columnstore and B+ tree – Are Hybrid Physical Designs Important? 2018 SIGMOD 5.6813929e-05
5,129 The Art of Balance: A RateupDBTM Experience of Building a CPU/GPU Hybrid Database Product 2021 VLDB 5.6724875e-05
5,334 Fast In-Memory SQL Analytics on Typed Graphs 2017 VLDB 5.5625443e-05
5,571 A Deep Dive into Common Open Formats for Analytical DBMSs 2023 VLDB 5.4279553e-05
5,585 Teaching an Old Elephant New Tricks 2009 CIDR 5.4196973e-05
5,612 Design and Evaluation of Storage Organizations for Read-Optimized Main Memory Databases 2013 VLDB 5.4104818e-05
5,723 MCJoin: A Memory-Constrained Join for Column-Store Main-Memory Databases. 2012 SIGMOD 5.3530385e-05
6,668 Mainlining Databases: Supporting Fast Transactional Workloads on Universal Columnar Data File Formats 2021 VLDB 4.9647176e-05
6,788 Proteus: Autonomous Adaptive Storage for Mixed Workloads 2022 SIGMOD 4.9207259e-05
7,110 Wide Table Layout Optimization based on Column Ordering and Duplication 2017 SIGMOD 4.8228761e-05
7,127 Jigsaw: A Data Storage and Query Processing Engine for Irregular Table Partitioning 2021 SIGMOD 4.8184276e-05
7,209 GPU-accelerated data management under the test of time 2020 CIDR 4.7949787e-05
7,470 Bullion: A Column Store for Machine Learning 2025 CIDR 4.7159125e-05
8,353 Cubrick: Indexing Millions of Records per Second for Interactive Analytics 2016 VLDB 4.5331059e-05
8,394 Optimizing Declarative Graph Queries at Large Scale 2019 SIGMOD 4.5233733e-05
8,517 Extending Polaris to Support Transactions 2024 SIGMOD 4.4897788e-05
8,714 Tiresias: Enabling Predictive Autonomous Storage and Indexing 2022 VLDB 4.457682e-05
9,442 BlockJoin: Efficient Matrix Partitioning Through Joins 2017 VLDB 4.3384032e-05
9,907 Keep Your Distributed Data Warehouse Consistent at a Minimal Cost 2023 SIGMOD 4.2536148e-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
20 C-Store: A Column-oriented DBMS 2005 VLDB 0.00086163998
35 MonetDB/X100: Hyper-Pipelining Query Execution 2005 CIDR 0.00076209479
80 Weaving Relations for Cache Performance 2001 VLDB 0.00055735291
132 Integrating Compression and Execution in Column-Oriented Database Systems 2006 SIGMOD 0.00043697853
466 A Case for Fractured Mirrors 2002 VLDB 0.00022455567
515 QPipe: A Simultaneously Pipelined Relational Query Engine 2005 SIGMOD 0.00021209491
708 Performance Tradeoffs in Read-Optimized Databases 2006 VLDB 0.00017753572
1,046 Buffering Database Operations for Enhanced Instruction Cache Performance 2004 SIGMOD 0.00014446882
2,802 Efficient Execution of Joins in a Star Schema 2002 SIGMOD 8.1073885e-05
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Semantically Similar Papers

Overall Rank Paper Year Venue Pagerank
5,585 Teaching an Old Elephant New Tricks 2009 CIDR 5.4196973e-05
1,697 Bridging the Archipelago between Row-Stores and Column-Stores for Hybrid Workloads 2016 SIGMOD 0.00010859294
5,612 Design and Evaluation of Storage Organizations for Read-Optimized Main Memory Databases 2013 VLDB 5.4104818e-05
1,949 Positional Update Handling in Column Stores 2010 SIGMOD 9.9934641e-05
20 C-Store: A Column-oriented DBMS 2005 VLDB 0.00086163998
132 Integrating Compression and Execution in Column-Oriented Database Systems 2006 SIGMOD 0.00043697853
4,445 The Impact of Columnar In-Memory Databases on Enterprise Systems: Implications of Eliminating Transaction-Maintained Aggregates 2014 VLDB 6.1754623e-05
708 Performance Tradeoffs in Read-Optimized Databases 2006 VLDB 0.00017753572
3,761 Read-Optimized Databases, In Depth 2008 VLDB 6.7777865e-05
1,590 Column-oriented Database Systems 2009 VLDB 0.00011230525