# PgColumnar

> pgColumnar is a column-oriented storage extension for PostgreSQL, implemented as a table access method. A table created USING pgcolumnar stores its data by column, with per-column compression, chunk-group skipping, and a vectorized aggregate path. It targets analytic workloads: large scans, aggregates, and column projections over append-mostly data. It also reads external Parquet and Apache Iceberg tables, from a local path or from object storage.

![pgcolumnar-logo](/media/images/pgcolumnar-logo.width-1200.format-webp.webp)

## PgColumnar: the Column extension for PostgreSQL

pgColumnar is a column-oriented storage extension for PostgreSQL, implemented as a table access method. A table created USING pgcolumnar stores its data by column, with per-column compression, chunk-group skipping, and a vectorized aggregate path. It targets analytic workloads: large scans, aggregates, and column projections over append-mostly data. It also reads external Parquet and Apache Iceberg tables, from a local path or from object storage.

## Contact us

Reach out! We would love to hear from you.

[Learn More](</contact-us/>)

## More Information

PgColumnar is currently 1.0alpha2 and ready to be tested by the wider world.

  * License: MIT to encourage contribution (AI welcome)
  * Docs: <https://commandprompt.github.io/pgcolumnar/>
  * Code: <https://github.com/commandprompt/pgcolumnar>  
  




## Major Features

  * Column-oriented storage in the relation's main fork, so the buffer manager, WAL, and page checksums apply.
  * Type-aware value encodings, applied to each chunk before compression.
  * Column projection: a scan decodes only the columns the query references.
  * Vectorized aggregate.
  * Parallel scan across a table's row groups.
  * Read stream prefetch of block reads on PostgreSQL 17 and later (pgcolumnar.enable_read_stream)
  * Index-only scans
  * Parallel bulk ingest
  * Reading external Parquet in place
  * Object storage
  * Apache Iceberg
  * REST catalog
  * [Read about more features here.](<https://commandprompt.github.io/pgcolumnar/features/>)

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