# Concepts

Apache Pinot™ is a database designed to deliver highly concurrent, ultra-low-latency queries on large datasets through a set of common data model abstractions. Delivering on these goals requires several foundational architectural commitments, including:

* Storing data in columnar form to support high-performance scanning
* Sharding of data to scale both storage and computation
* A distributed architecture designed to scale capacity linearly
* A tabular data model read by SQL queries

To learn about Pinot components, terminology, and gain a conceptual understanding of how data is stored in Pinot, review the following sections:

* [Pinot storage model](https://docs.pinot.apache.org/release-1.2.0/basics/concepts/pinot-storage-model)
* [Pinot architecture](https://docs.pinot.apache.org/release-1.2.0/basics/concepts/architecture)
* [Pinot components](https://docs.pinot.apache.org/release-1.2.0/basics/concepts/components)