
MariaDB vs MariaDB ColumnStore: What’s the Difference?
MariaDB and MariaDB ColumnStore serve different workloads. MariaDB is a row-based relational database best for OLTP use cases like transactions, e-commerce, and web apps. ColumnStore, on the other hand, uses columnar storage optimized for OLAP, making it ideal for analytics, BI, and large-scale data queries. In practice, businesses often use both together—MariaDB for fast transactional operations and ColumnStore for analyzing massive datasets.