C-Store was a database management system

Database management system

A database management system is a software package with computer programs that control the creation, maintenance, and use of a database. It allows organizations to conveniently develop databases for various applications by database administrators and other specialists. A database is an integrated...

 (DBMS) based on a column-oriented DBMS

Column-oriented DBMS

A column-oriented DBMS is a database management system that stores its content by column rather than by row. This has advantages for data warehouses and library catalogues where aggregates are computed over large numbers of similar data items....

 developed by a team at Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

, Brandeis University

Brandeis University

Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...

 and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

, including Michael Stonebraker

Michael Stonebraker

Michael Ralph Stonebraker is a computer scientist specializing in database research.Through a series of academic prototypes and commercial startups, Stonebraker's research and products are central to many relational database systems on the market today...

, Stanley Zdonik

Stanley Zdonik

Stanley Zdonik is a computer scientist specializing in database management systems. He is currently a tenured professor of computer science at Brown University. Zdonik has lived in the Boston area his entire life. After completing a two bachelors and two master's degrees at MIT, he then earned a...

, and Samuel Madden (MIT)

Samuel Madden (MIT)

Samuel R. Madden is a computer scientist specializing in database management systems. He is currently an associate professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.-Career:...

.

C-Store differs from most traditional relational database management system

Relational database management system

A relational database management system is a database management system that is based on the relational model as introduced by E. F. Codd. Most popular databases currently in use are based on the relational database model....

 (RDBMS) designs in many ways, perhaps most notably in that it stores data by column and not by row, optimizing the database for reading of data rather than writing.

C-Store is licensed under the BSD license. Stonebraker and his colleagues have formed Vertica

Vertica

Vertica Systems is an analytic database management software company. Vertica was founded in 2005 by database researcher Michael Stonebraker, and Andrew Palmer; its President and CEO is Christopher P. Lynch. HP announced it would acquire the company in February 2011. On March 22, 2011, HP completed...

, a company to commercialize C-Store.