Why We Built Rill with DuckDB
Blog post from Rill
DuckDB, a lightweight analytics database optimized for read-oriented workloads, has garnered significant attention within the data community for its performance and versatility. Created by researchers Mark Raasveldt and Hannes Mühleisen in 2019, DuckDB is comparable to SQLite in terms of ease of integration, but it is tailored for analytical rather than transactional tasks. Rill, an open-source BI tool, chose DuckDB for its Rill Developer product due to its high performance in single-node applications, enabling fast data profiling and interactive SQL modeling without a run button. DuckDB's SQL dialect, derived from Postgres, enhances user experience with its syntax for analytical expressions. Its support for various data formats and external data querying capabilities positions DuckDB as a potential universal data connector. The vibrant open-source community around DuckDB contributes to rapid innovation and adoption, making it an attractive choice for developers seeking a reliable and efficient database engine for analytics applications.