DuckDB is an in-process
SQL OLAP database management system

Why DuckDB?

Simple

  • In-process, serverless
  • C++11, no dependencies, single file build
  • APIs for Python/R/Java/…
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Feature-rich

  • Transactions, persistence
  • Extensive SQL support
  • Direct Parquet & CSV querying
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Fast

  • Vectorized engine
  • Optimized for analytics
  • Parallel query processing
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Free

  • Free & Open Source
  • Permissive MIT License
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All the benefits of a database, none of the hassle.

Installation

Choose your environment to use for DuckDB

  • Python
  • R
  • Java
  • node.js
  • C++
  • CLI
pip install duckdb==0.2.9

Latest release: DuckDB 0.2.9 System detected: Other Installations

When to use DuckDB

  • Processing and storing tabular datasets, e.g. from CSV or Parquet files
  • Interactive data analysis, e.g. Joining & aggregate multiple large tables
  • Concurrent large changes, to multiple large tables, e.g. appending rows, adding/removing/updating columns
  • Large result set transfer to client

When to not use DuckDB

  • Non-rectangular data sets, e.g. graphs, plaintext
  • High-volume transactional use cases (e.g. tracking orders in a webshop)
  • Large client/server installations for centralized enterprise data warehousing
  • Writing to a single database from multiple concurrent processes

Blog

→ Archive
2021-08-27

Fastest table sort in the West - Redesigning DuckDB’s sort

TLDR: DuckDB, a free and Open-Source analytical data management system, has a new highly efficient parallel sorting implementation that can sort much more data than fits in main memory. Database systems use sorting for many purposes, the most obvious purpose being when a user adds an ORDER BY clause to […]

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2021-06-25

Querying Parquet with Precision using DuckDB

TLDR: DuckDB, a free and open source analytical data management system, can run SQL queries directly on Parquet files and automatically take advantage of the advanced features of the Parquet format. Apache Parquet is the most common “Big Data” storage format for analytics. In Parquet files, data is stored in […]

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2021-05-14

Efficient SQL on Pandas with DuckDB

TLDR: DuckDB, a free and open source analytical data management system, can efficiently run SQL queries directly on Pandas DataFrames. Recently, an article was published advocating for using SQL for Data Analysis. Here at team DuckDB, we are huge fans of SQL. It is a versatile and flexible language that […]

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