Column-Oriented Databases, an Alternative for Analytical Environment

Abstract

It is widely accepted that a data warehouse is the central place of a Business Intelligence system. It stores all data that is relevant for the company, data that is acquired both from internal and external sources. Such a repository stores data from more years than a transactional system can do, and offer valuable information to its users to make the best decisions, based on accurate and reliable data. As the volume of data stored in an enterprise data warehouse becomes larger and larger, new approaches are needed to make the analytical system more efficient. This paper presents column-oriented databases, which are considered an element of the new generation of DBMS technology. The paper emphasizes the need and the advantages of these databases for an analytical environment and make a short presentation of two of the DBMS built in a columnar approach.

Keywords

• column-oriented database
• row-oriented database
• data warehouse
• Business Intelligence
• symmetric multiprocessing
• massively parallel processing