Introducing cstore_fdw, the first column-oriented store available for PostgreSQL. Using it will let you:

• Leverage typical analytics benefits of columnar stores
• Deploy on stock PostgreSQL or scale-out PostgreSQL (Citus)

Download and get started at https://github.com/citusdata/cstore_fdw.

Highlights

Key areas improved by this extension:

• Faster Analytics — Reduce analytics query disk and memory use by 10x
• Lower Storage — Compress data by 3x
• Easy Setup — Deploy as standard PostgreSQL extension
• Flexibility — Mix row- and column-based tables in the same DB
• Community — Benefit from PostgreSQL compatibility and open development

Learn more on our blog post.

Faster Analytics

cstore_fdw brings substantial performance benefits to analytics-heavy workloads:

• Column projections: only read columns relevant to the query
• Compressed data: higher data density reduces disk I/O
• Skip indexes: row group stats permit skipping irrelevant rows
• Stats collections: integrates with PostgreSQL’s own query optimizer
• PostgreSQL-native formats: no deserialization overhead at query time

Lower Storage

Cleanly implements full-table compression:

• Uses PostgreSQL’s own LZ family compression technique
• Only decompresses columns needed by the query
• Extensible to support different codecs

Easy Setup

If you know how to use PostgreSQL extensions, you know how to use cstore_fdw:

• Deploy as standard PostgreSQL extension
• Simply specify table type at creation time using FDW commands
• Copy data into your tables using standard PostgreSQL COPY command

Flexibility

Have the best of all worlds… mix row- and column-based tables in the same DB:

CREATE FOREIGN TABLE cstore_table
  (num integer, name text)
SERVER cstore_server;

CREATE TABLE plain_table
  (num integer, name text);

COPY cstore_table FROM STDIN (FORMAT csv);
-- 1, foo
-- 2, bar
-- 3, baz
-- \.

COPY plain_table FROM STDIN (FORMAT csv);
-- 4, foo
-- 5, bar
-- 6, baz
-- \.

SELECT * FROM cstore_table c, plain_table p WHERE c.name=p.name;
-- num | name | num | name 
-------+------+-----+------
--   1 |  foo |   4 |  foo
--   2 |  bar |   5 |  bar
--   3 |  baz |   6 |  baz

Community

Join the cstore users Google Group.

Full integration with rich PostgreSQL ecosystem:

• Compatible with all existing PostgreSQL data types
• Leverage semi-structured data using hstore or json
• Quickly keep track of distinct values with HyperLogLog

Learn more about the Optimized Row Column (ORC) file format , which influenced the layout used by cstore_fdw, or dive into the code.