When I hear columnar storage, I can't help but remember all the stories my friends have told me about kx systems (I'd love to share them but my memory is so fuzzy that I wouldn't be doing them justice. Hopefully some of the HNers here can share some of theirs though!) [1][2].

[1] http://kx.com/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_(programming_language)