Columnar datastore
Kudu is a columnar datastore. A columnar datastore stores data in strongly-typed columns. With a proper design, a columnar store can be superior for analytical or data warehousing workloads for the following reasons:
- Read efficiency
- For analytical queries, you can read a single column, or a portion of that column, while ignoring other columns. This means you can fulfill your request while reading a minimal number of blocks on disk. With a row-based store, you need to read the entire row, even if you only return values from a few columns.
- Data compression
- Because a given column contains only one type of data, pattern-based compression can be orders of magnitude more efficient than compressing mixed data types, which are used in row-based solutions. Combined with the efficiencies of reading data from columns, compression allows you to fulfill your query while reading even fewer blocks from disk.
