What is a column-oriented database?

A conventional database stores information by rows. A column-oriented database stores information by columns. For data crunching implementations like a data warehouse or a CDR (Call Details Record) processing application this is a much better organization for performance.


Here is a simple example:
Our data is represented in the table below.
A column-oriented database will store the information on the disk by column: 1, 2, 3 - 10:17, 11:11, 13:15 -1:37, 5:13, 3:59 - 12345, 23456, 34567. A traditional database will store the same information on disk by row: 1, 10:17, 1:37, 12345 - 2, 11:11, 5:13, 23456 - 3, 13:15, 3:59, 34567.
Now imagine you would like to average the call duration column. In a column-oriented database you have all durations in sequential order on the disk. This will result in an optimal disk read and thus an extremely fast average calculation. On top of that a column oriented database will only fetch that one duration column while a row database will fetch all columns. Less I/O equals more speed.