Do any of you guys or gals have experience with column based databases as opposed to relational databases?
Do you have a good os and program that you like for a column database?
Is there a database for dummys that can lay out my options in something that approximates English?
I am looking at this for eventually having terobites or more of data that will be read once query many times and column based data structure seems perfect for this but I don't know anyone who has experience with it. So if you have a platform you love let me know!

I know this isn't a strictly OS question but it is a little more than just a software app too.