Physical design approaches for column-stores

Abstract

In this paper we survey column-store database technology. We describe column-store database management system and point out the distinctions from the classical row-store DBMS. We present strong and weak points of the column-stores, the reasons of their appearance and success. We survey a variety of technical solutions, which provide these systems with the advantage. We also describe workloads which benefit this approach the most and thus constitute the area of application of commercial column-store DBMS systems. Then, we present a brief introduction into the problem of DBMS physical design. We analyze the perspectives of various classical approaches (allocation, partitioning etc), as well as column-store specific ones (column sort orders and join index application).