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CONNECT and DISCONNECT Statements

New Support for the CONNECT and DISCONNECT statements is introduced in DuckDB 2.0.

The CONNECT statement routes the current session to a remote database, so that subsequent queries execute on that remote and their results stream back. DISCONNECT returns the session to the local database.

CONNECT is central to using DuckDB as a server: a DuckDB instance can serve its databases over the network, and any other DuckDB can attach to it and route queries there.

Examples

Attach a remote DuckDB server over the Quack protocol, route queries to it, and disconnect again:

ATTACH 'quack:server.example.com' AS qk (TOKEN 'my_token');

CONNECT qk;
SELECT count(*) FROM events; -- executes on the server, results stream back
DISCONNECT;

Connect directly to a remote database using a connection string:

CONNECT 'postgres://localhost/mydb';
SELECT count(*) FROM orders; -- runs on the PostgreSQL server
DISCONNECT;

Syntax 

CONNECT { attached_database | 'connection_string' };
DISCONNECT;

CONNECT accepts either the alias of a database attached with ATTACH, or a connection string for a remote database. While a connection is active, queries that do not explicitly qualify a different database execute on the remote.

DISCONNECT ends the active connection and returns the session to the local database. Issuing DISCONNECT without an active connection returns an error.

Supported Databases

CONNECT works with databases that support remote execution, including:

  • DuckDB servers reached over the Quack protocol.
  • PostgreSQL and MySQL servers. For these, the remote pushdown optimizer ships SQL directly to the server instead of pulling tables over the wire.

In-process local databases, such as the default in-memory database or a DuckDB database file, do not support CONNECT.

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