Method and mechanism for storing and accessing data
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A method and mechanism is disclosed for implementing storage and retrieval of data in a computing system. Data compression is performed on stored data by reducing or eliminating duplicate values in a database block. Duplicated values are eliminated within the set of data that is to be stored within a particular data storage unit. Rather than writing the duplicated data values to the data storage unit, the on-disk data is configured to reference a symbol table a single copy of each duplicated data value. Column reordering may be performed in an embodiment to further improve compression efficiency. The column reordering may be performed to allow efficient removal of trailing NULL values from on-disk storage.