---
title: Columnar Storage
description: Column-oriented indexing for fast filtering, sorting, and aggregates
canonical: https://docs.paradedb.com/documentation/indexing/columnar
---

By default, all non-text and non-JSON fields are indexed using ParadeDB's columnar format.
This enables fast [filtering pushdown](/documentation/filtering#filter-pushdown), [Top K ordering](/documentation/sorting/topk), and
[aggregates](/documentation/aggregates/overview) over these fields. For example, in the following index definition, `rating` and `id` are columnar indexed
because they are integers, whereas `description` is not because it is text.

```sql
CREATE INDEX search_idx ON mock_items
USING bm25 (id, description, rating)
WITH (key_field = 'id');
```

To enable columnar indexing for text and JSON fields, cast the field to a [tokenizer](/documentation/tokenizers/overview) with `columnar` set to `true`.

```sql
CREATE INDEX search_idx ON mock_items
USING bm25 (id, (description::pdb.unicode_words('columnar=true')), rating)
WITH (key_field = 'id');
```

<Note>
  The `columnar` option for tokenizers is available in versions `0.22.0` and
  above.
</Note>

Columnar defaults to `false` for all tokenizers besides [literal](/documentation/tokenizers/available-tokenizers/literal) and
[literal normalized](/documentation/tokenizers/available-tokenizers/literal-normalized), which default to
`true` and do not require an explicit setting.

The reason is that tokenized fields can represent large documents and would be expensive to store column-wise,
whereas literal and literal normalized fields are typically single-value and much more compact.

<Note>
The columnar field stores the raw text value regardless of the tokenizer. For example, if `Hello world` is
split into tokens `hello` and `world`, the columnar value remains `Hello world`.

This is important because operations like filtering and sorting require the original field value, not the tokens.

</Note>

<Note>
  Internally, Tantivy refers to columnar fields as fast fields. Our [legacy
  docs](/legacy/indexing/create-index) also refer to these fields as fast.
</Note>