Category: Databases

A columnar database stores the data of an entire column in consecutive memory blocks, while a relational database stores the data of an entire row of a table in consecutive memory blocks.

When a query is run against a column on which a secondary index is created, the database will go to the secondary index (where it is stored) and look for the address of the corresponding row in the table.

Sharding is horizontal (row wise) database partitioning as opposed to vertical (column wise) partitioning which is Normalization.