DuckDB — An Analytical Database Right in Your Notebook

DuckDB is the SQLite for analytics — an embedded columnar database without a server. Gigabytes of data at speeds rivaling Spark.

DuckDB — Analytics without Infrastructure¶

In-process OLAP without a server — runs inside your application.

import duckdb

result = duckdb.sql("""
    SELECT region, COUNT(*) AS orders, SUM(total_czk) AS revenue
    FROM 'data/orders/*.parquet'
    WHERE order_date >= '2026-01-01'
    GROUP BY region ORDER BY revenue DESC
""").fetchdf()

# Different formats without import
duckdb.sql("SELECT * FROM 'data.csv' LIMIT 10")
duckdb.sql("SELECT * FROM 's3://bucket/*.parquet'")

When to Use DuckDB¶

• Local analysis — ad-hoc queries
• Prototyping — testing SQL
• CI/CD — testing dbt locally
• Data science — SQL in Jupyter

Summary¶

DuckDB is revolutionary for local analytics. Zero setup, SQL over files, integration with pandas.