Overview:
- cstore_fdw is very promising columnar storage extension for PostgreSQL – home page: https://www.citusdata.com/community/cstore-fdw
- it compress data and repeated values in column
- works as foreign data wrapper
- I tested on PostgreSQL 9.3 on which my app presently runs
- I tested speed and data file size
Results:
- cstore_fdw saved from 50% to 85% percent of the disk space
- analytical queries were running 3x or 4x quicker on cstore_fdw foreign tables then on original normal PostgreSQL tables
- cstore_fdw definitely saves both disk space and run time of analytical queries
- but if you need inheritance (which is my case) you must wait for production version of Pg 9.5 + new version of cstore_fdw (existing 1.3 does not support pg 9.5)