It's very likely it wouldn't. (Decent) analytical DBMSes have a whole lot up their sleeves which just choosing one plain-vanilla data structure for your table d

It's very likely it wouldn't. (Decent) analytical DBMSes have a whole lot up their sleeves which just choosing one plain-vanilla data structure for your table doesn't even approach in terms of performance. The benefit may be well upwards of 10x in many real-world scenario. Of course, if you know you get one single query which you know in advance, carefully build a data structure to cater just to that, and you know your data structures beyond the just the basics - then, yes, a DBMS would be overkill. But it still won't be a walk in the park.