News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:How PostgreSQL stores rows by mdavidn on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @09:31PM (#30281763)
Many query plans (e.g. sorts, joins, aggregation) involve scanning large swaths of data. The importance of sequential access for such operations cannot be overstated. Storage, processors, and networks are designed to make sequential access performant.

Some SQL databases are backed by key-values stores, but they generally store large segments in the values rather than individual records. (e.g. Snowflake, Athena)

Re:How PostgreSQL stores rows by polskibus on Thursday February 10, 2022 @05:26AM (#30284429)
Segments also allow you to store some info about segment statistics, for example min and max for each numeric column which allow optimiser to skip entire segments when filtering. More tricks can be found in Snowflake paper.