Databases Demystified Chapter 3 – Row Store vs. Column Store

In this blog post by Michael Kaminsky, he discusses the differences in architecture between row- and column-based databases. The way data is stored on a hard drive determines whether it's optimized for transactional or analytical workloads. Row stores are efficient for CRUD operations while column stores are better suited for aggregate functions. Understanding disk storage, where data is organized into blocks, helps in comprehending the differences between row and column stores. In row stores, data is written one row at a time, making it suitable for transactional queries that read and manipulate individual objects. On the other hand, column stores organize data by columns, which makes analytical queries faster as they perform aggregate functions on entire columns.