Best Columnar Databases for AI Query

BigQuery is a columnar database that stores data in columns rather than rows, a structure that significantly speeds up analytic queries. This optimized format helps reduce the amount of data scanned, which enhances query performance, especially for large datasets. Columnar storage is particularly useful when running complex analytical queries, as it allows for more efficient processing of specific data columns. New customers can explore BigQuery’s columnar database capabilities with $300 in free credits, testing how the structure can improve their data processing and analytics performance. The columnar format also provides better data compression, further improving storage efficiency and query speed.

Snowflake is a comprehensive AI Data Cloud platform designed to eliminate data silos and simplify data architectures, enabling organizations to get more value from their data. The platform offers interoperable storage that provides near-infinite scale and access to diverse data sources, both inside and outside Snowflake. Its elastic compute engine delivers high performance for any number of users, workloads, and data volumes with seamless scalability. Snowflake’s Cortex AI accelerates enterprise AI by providing secure access to leading large language models (LLMs) and data chat services. The platform’s cloud services automate complex resource management, ensuring reliability and cost efficiency. Trusted by over 11,000 global customers across industries, Snowflake helps businesses collaborate on data, build data applications, and maintain a competitive edge.

MariaDB Platform is a complete enterprise open source database solution. It has the versatility to support transactional, analytical and hybrid workloads as well as relational, JSON and hybrid data models. And it has the scalability to grow from standalone databases and data warehouses to fully distributed SQL for executing millions of transactions per second and performing interactive, ad hoc analytics on billions of rows. MariaDB can be deployed on prem on commodity hardware, is available on all major public clouds and through MariaDB SkySQL as a fully managed cloud database. To learn more, visit mariadb.com.