Column stores (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column-oriented_DBMS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column-oriented_DBMS) have been designed specially for this case.

Column stores (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column-oriented_DBMS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column-oriented_DBMS) have been designed specially for this case. There are a few ones (monet, cstore) but the really good ones are sadly $$$. That said, their ideas are quite straightforward and you could look them up quickly (I forgot the blog I was thinking about, but check also here: http://www.vldb.org/ http://www.vldb.org/ ).