What’s Cool and Columns and Their Benefits - and how to extend their benefits

For much of the last decade the use of column based
approaches has been very much a niche
activity. However, with a substantial number
of vendors now active in the market, with over
2,000 customers (many of them Global 2000
companies) between them, we believe that it
is time for columns to step out of the shadows
to become a major force in the data warehouse
and associated markets. Given that view, this
paper will define what column-based relational
databases do and how they do it, and where
they have advantages (and disadvantages)
compared to traditional approaches. This, in
turn, will lead to a discussion of the sort of environments
for which columns are best suited.
Up to this point all discussions in this paper
are generic. However, we will conclude with a
section on Infobright, a column-based vendor,
discussing how its technology has extended
the column-based paradigm to provide additional
performance and other benefits.

Free Download (subject to terms)