From eb10a88ce1dc73b010f547999ea1f665b6318775 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: medusa <newton214@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2025 13:01:32 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] Add tech_docs/columnar_data.md

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+### **What is Columnar Data?**
+Columnar data refers to a way of storing and organizing data where values are stored by **column** rather than by **row** (as in traditional row-based storage). This format is optimized for analytical queries that read large datasets but only access a subset of columns.
+
+#### **Key Characteristics:**
+- Data is stored column-wise (e.g., all values for `column1` are stored together, then `column2`, etc.).
+- Highly efficient for **read-heavy** operations (e.g., aggregations, filtering on specific columns).
+- Typically used in **OLAP (Online Analytical Processing)** systems (e.g., data warehouses, big data analytics).
+
+#### **Example: Row vs. Column Storage**
+| **Row-Based Storage** (e.g., CSV, traditional databases) | **Columnar Storage** (e.g., Parquet, ORC) |
+|----------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------|
+| `[Row1: 1, "Alice", 25], [Row2: 2, "Bob", 30], ...`      | `IDs: [1, 2, ...]`, `Names: ["Alice", "Bob", ...]`, `Ages: [25, 30, ...]` |
+
+---
+
+### **How to Identify Columnar Data?**
+You can determine if data is stored in a columnar format by checking:
+1. **File Format:** Common columnar formats include:
+   - **Apache Parquet** (`.parquet`)
+   - **ORC** (Optimized Row Columnar, `.orc`)
+   - **Arrow** (in-memory columnar format)
+   - **Columnar databases** (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift)
+2. **Metadata:** Columnar files often contain metadata like statistics (min/max values) for each column.
+3. **Query Performance:** If filtering or aggregating a single column is extremely fast, it’s likely columnar.
+
+---
+
+### **How to Efficiently Process Columnar Data?**
+To maximize performance when working with columnar data:
+1. **Use Columnar-Optimized Tools:**
+   - **Query Engines:** Apache Spark, Presto, DuckDB, ClickHouse.
+   - **Libraries:** PyArrow (Python), `pandas` (with `engine='pyarrow'`).
+   - **Databases:** Snowflake, BigQuery, Amazon Redshift.
+2. **Push Down Predicates:**
+   - Filter columns early in the query (columnar storage skips unneeded data).
+   ```sql
+   -- Good: Only reads "age" column
+   SELECT name FROM table WHERE age > 30;
+   ```
+3. **Use Column Pruning:**
+   - Only read the columns you need (avoid `SELECT *`).
+4. **Partitioning:**
+   - Split data by columns (e.g., date) to further reduce I/O.
+5. **Compression:**
+   - Columnar formats (like Parquet) use efficient compression (e.g., run-length encoding, dictionary encoding).
+
+#### **Example in Code:**
+```python
+# Using PyArrow (columnar processing)
+import pyarrow.parquet as pq
+
+# Read only specific columns (efficient)
+table = pq.read_table("data.parquet", columns=["name", "age"])
+
+# Filter efficiently with predicate pushdown
+filtered = table.filter(pc.field("age") > 30)
+```
+
+---
+
+### **When to Use Columnar Data?**
+✅ **Best for:**
+- Analytical workloads (aggregations, scans on few columns).
+- Large datasets where I/O efficiency matters.
+- Cloud data warehouses (BigQuery, Snowflake).
+
+❌ **Not ideal for:**
+- Row-by-row transactional workloads (OLTP).
+- Frequent single-row updates (columnar is write-heavy for updates).
+
+---
+
+### **Summary**
+- **Columnar data** stores values by column (not row), optimizing read performance.
+- **Identify it** by file formats (Parquet, ORC) or fast column-specific queries.
+- **Process efficiently** by using columnar tools, predicate pushdown, and column pruning.
+
+Would you like a comparison with row-oriented formats (e.g., CSV) in terms of performance benchmarks?
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