Technical Author & Data Engineer
Simon is a Data Engineer and Technical Author with 20+ years of experience in the data field. He's the author of the Data Engineering Blog (ssp.sh), curator of the Data Engineering Vault (vault.ssp.sh), and currently writes a book about Data Engineering Design Patterns (dedp.online). Simon maintains an awareness of open-source data engineering technologies and enjoys sharing his knowledge with the community.
2026/04/24 - Simon Späti
25 years of external tables, from Oracle 9i to DuckLake. When to use internal storage vs. external tables, why they keep getting re-added to every major data warehouse, and a benchmark showing the speed tax for cold data.
2026/04/17 - Simon Späti
DuckLake 1.0 ships, Lance adds vector search, Rust-native extension
2026/03/27 - Simon Späti
Mark Freeman, Head of DevRel at Gable, shares his Spec-Driven Development workflow for producing high-quality, reproducible AI outcomes using Claude Code, ExcaliDraw diagrams, JSON schemas, and agent teams with tmux.
2026/03/13 - Simon Späti
SQL Transpilers, VS Code Extensions, Dives and more
2026/02/24 - Simon Späti
Comparing Git-like Tools That Separate Metadata from Data
2026/02/11 - Simon Späti
MSSQL Extension, Vortex File Format & 2TB Memory Benchmarks
2026/02/05 - Simon Späti
Build a local-first RAG for your Obsidian notes using DuckDB's vector search, then deploy it as a serverless web app with MotherDuck
2026/01/17 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: Iceberg extension adds full DML (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE). Process 1TB in 30 seconds. Query data via AI agents with MCP server. TypeScript macros for APIs.
2025/12/10 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: v1.4 adds AES-256 encryption. DuckLake brings ACID-compliant lakehouse with time-travel queries. Gaggle extension queries Kaggle datasets directly via SQL.
2025/12/03 - Simon Späti
Speed up slow dashboards without adding new infrastructure. Learn how DuckDB's caching extensions can drop query times from minutes to seconds.
2025/11/24 - Simon Späti
This article explores how to bring Git style workflows like branching, testing, and deploying to your data stack. Learn how concepts like zero copy cloning and metadata pointers can finally give you isolated test environments.
2025/11/12 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: QuackStore caching cuts query time from 49s to 3s. Infera runs ONNX ML models in SQL. 127 community extensions analyzed. DuckLake architecture explained.
2025/10/30 - Simon Späti
A great panel answering the most voted/commented data questions on Reddit
2025/10/07 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: v1.4.0 LTS brings AES-256 encryption, MERGE statements, and Iceberg writes. 100x faster than Spark on local Parquet. Official Docker images released.
2025/09/09 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: Spatial joins 58x faster via R-tree indexing. pg_duckdb 1.0 adds OLAP analytics to PostgreSQL. One team cut Snowflake costs 79% using DuckDB caching.
2025/08/19 - Simon Späti
Learn what a semantic layer is, why it matters, and how to build a simple one with DuckDB and Ibis using just YAML and Python
2025/08/07 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: 50.7% YoY developer growth. DuckLake v0.2 adds credential secrets. BigQuery extension hits 21.7k weekly downloads. Vector search enables RAG applications.
2025/07/21 - Simon Späti
A comprehensive 3-week structured roadmap for learning data engineering fundamentals, from SQL and Git basics to advanced topics like streaming, data quality, and DevOps.RetryClaude can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.
2025/07/08 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: Tributary streams Kafka data to SQL queries. SQLRooms enables browser analytics via DuckDB-WASM. pg_duckdb benchmarks show 1,500x TPC-DS speedup.
2025/07/03 - Simon Späti
Explore the top data engineering tools and platforms of 2026. This guide details the essential DevOps tools, CI/CD practices, and infrastructure needed to build a modern, scalable data platform.
2025/06/06 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: DuckLake combines catalog and table format with ACID metadata in SQL. Radio extension adds WebSocket and Redis Pub/Sub. Top CSV benchmark results.
2025/05/23 - Simon Späti
Learn how DuckDB and open table formats like Iceberg power a fast, composable analytics stack on affordable cloud storage
2025/05/08 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: Metabase driver queries Parquet files directly. FlockMTL integrates LLMs into SQL workflows. Doom clone runs in DuckDB-WASM. Spatial wins top honors.
2025/04/18 - Simon Späti
How to Query JSON and Log Files with SQL Using DuckDB and MotherDuck
2025/04/05 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: Streaming support with new remote file caching. Community extensions expand real-time analytics. Event-driven processing patterns for data pipelines.
2025/03/28 - Simon Späti
Understand when to use a vector database and how it differs from vector search engines.
2025/03/07 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: v1.2 adds Google Sheets extension for SQL on spreadsheets. Duckberg queries Iceberg tables via Python. Smallpond sorts 110TB in 30 min using Ray.
2025/02/26 - Simon Späti
Unlock the power of geospatial analysis with DuckDB Spatial and MotherDuck, making location-based data processing faster, simpler, and more accessible for data engineers.
2025/02/09 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: DuckCon #6 runs TPC-H SF300 on Raspberry Pi. SQL/PGQ graph queries 10-100x faster than Neo4j. Arrow Flight enables concurrent read/write access.
2025/01/22 - Simon Späti
Master the essential data engineering toolkit—Linux commands, Docker, Python, SQL, and developer tools. A practical guide to the tools every DE needs.
2025/01/10 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: PyIceberg enables local Iceberg catalogs in Python. Zero-egress data sharing via Cloudflare R2. SQLFlow streams Kafka and Bluesky data with DuckDB SQL.
2024/11/20 - Simon Späti, Mehdi Ouazza
Discover how to build data pipelines to get insights from Bluesky
2024/11/12 - Simon Späti
Discover how companies are running DuckDB in production
2024/11/04 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: HTTP extension queries REST APIs in SQL. Unity Catalog integration via dbt. Pivot tables extension. Drug database demo processes 6M records per minute.
2024/10/16 - Simon Späti
Let's take a closer look to understand the various Enterprise use cases of DuckDB and how they can help on your data and analytics journey.
2024/10/04 - Simon Späti
DuckDB news: v1.1 hits 6M monthly Python downloads. Spark API compatibility layer added. Build RAG apps with GPT-4o embeddings. Extensions reach 17M monthly downloads.
