DATA STORAGE USING VECTORS OF VECTORS

The systems and methods described here can reduce the storage space required (memory and/or disk) to store certain types of data, provide efficient (fast) creation, modification and retrieval of such data, and support such data within the framework of a multi-version database. In some embodiments, the systems and methods can store each field of a set of records as a vector of values, e.g., a data vector. A set of records can be represented using a vector id vector, or "vid" vector, wherein each element of the vid vector contains a reference to the memory location of a data vector. A header table can store associations between labels and "vid" vectors that pertain to those labels. Identical data vectors can be re-used between different record sets or vid vectors needing that vector, thus saving space.