What are advantages of column store tables?

The advantages of column store tables primarily stem from their design, which focuses on storing data column-wise rather than row-wise. This structural difference leads to several performance benefits suited for analytical operations.

One significant advantage is that only the columns required for a query are loaded into memory. This selective loading reduces memory usage and boosts performance since it minimizes the volume of data processed during analytics operations. When dealing with large datasets, this efficiency becomes crucial, as it allows for quicker access and processing times, especially in read-heavy operations.

Additionally, column store tables utilize compression techniques that take advantage of the similarities between data points within the same column. This results in a smaller data footprint as repetitive patterns in data can be stored more compactly. The combination of efficient memory usage and reduced storage requirements enhances overall system performance.

While it is true that column store tables are generally not optimized for high-volume read/write transactional processing like their row store counterparts, and although they can be partitioned, the primary benefits of using them revolve around their ability to load specific columns, efficient memory usage, and effective data compression strategies.