More information on Columnar or 'Column-family' data model in Cosmos DB

Question

The documenation states that the Cosmos DB engine "natively supports multiple data models: key-value, documents, graphs, and columnar ".

However, I can't seem to find any other information relating specifically to the columnar model.

There is also information available on the following APIs:

• DocumentDB APIs
• Table APIs
• Graph APIs

But nothing on Columnar or Column-family, as described in various summaries.

Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/introduction

Answer 1

can't seem to find any other information relating specifically to the columnar model

This article will help you understand the concept of column-family:

You can think of a column-family database as holding tabular data with rows and columns, but the columns are divided into groups known as column families. Each column family holds a set of columns that are logically related together and are typically retrieved or manipulated as a unit. Other data that is accessed separately can be stored in separate column families. Within a column family, new columns can be added dynamically, and rows can be sparse (that is, a row doesn't need to have a value for every column).

Besides, as David Makogon said, you can give your feedback (or comment) on that page or contact Cosmos DB team on this email ([email protected]) for more details about column-family data model.