# A Tour of the Vortex Columnar Format with vortex-java

DevFeed: [A Tour of the Vortex Columnar Format with vortex-java](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/a-tour-of-the-vortex-columnar-format-with-vortex-java-85841.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://dfa1.github.io/articles/a-tour-of-the-vortex-columnar-format-with-vortex-java.html>)

Author: Davide Angelocola

Published: 2026-10-11T00:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Davide Angelocola](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/davide-angelocola.md>)

Topics: [parquet](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/parquet.md>), [CSV](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/csv.md>), [Plover](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/plover.md>)

Tags: [bit-packing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/bit-packing.md>), [compression](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/compression.md>), [csv](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/csv.md>)

## AI overview

A hands-on tour of the Vortex columnar file format using vortex-java and Binance market data. It explains how Vortex selects and combines encodings by column and chunk, compares storage and query performance with CSV and Zstandard, and demonstrates inspecting and querying the resulting file.

## Source excerpt

Vortex is a columnar file format whose compressor picks an encoding per column and per chunk. It follows the BtrBlocks paper: a handful of simple encodings, combined recursively, instead of one clever encoding. This is a tour of the format using the vortex-java library on a public CSV file. It is for someone new to Vortex: what went in, how it is laid out, and which encoding each column ended up with, and why. If you would rather start with pictures, SpiralDB's Vortex: One Format for Any Shape animates the dictionary, run-end and bit-packing encodings used below, and how they cascade.