In recent years, column stores (or C-stores for short) have emerged as a
novel approach to deal with read-mostly data warehousing applications.
Experimental evidence suggests that, for certain types of queries, the new
features of C-stores result in orders of magnitude improvement over traditional
relational engines. At the same time, some C-store proponents argue that
C-stores are fundamentally different from traditional engines, and therefore
their benefits cannot be incorporated into a relational engine short of a
complete rewrite.