Wadata

Wadata is a lightweight, column-oriented database format that emerged in the early 2020s as an alternative to traditional row-based relational databases. Designed primarily for analytical workloads, Wadata stores data in a way that minimizes disk I/O while maintaining compatibility with SQL-compatible query engines. The format was first introduced by the open‑source project Wadata Analytics, led by a team of data engineers at a university research lab. The initial release, version 1.0, was made available on GitHub under an MIT license and quickly gained attention for its ability to compress large datasets to less than a tenth of their original size without sacrificing query speed.

Key technical features include vectorized storage of each column, optional app‑side compression using LZ4, and a simple indexing scheme that can be extended via user‑defined functions. Wadata natively supports ACID‑like transactional guarantees by maintaining a lightweight write-ahead log and snapshot isolation for concurrent queries. The project also includes a C++ API, bindings for Python and JavaScript, and a command‑line utility for bulk ingestion.

By late 2024, Wadata had been adopted by several startups focused on log analytics and by a handful of academic institutions for teaching database concepts. The community around Wadata has remained small but active, with regular updates that improve write performance and add support for full‑text search. While it has not yet reached parity with heavy‑weight systems such as PostgreSQL or ClickHouse, its simplicity and low resource footprint make it a compelling choice for modest-scale analytical applications.