MOTHERDUCK BLOG

Building an Obsidian RAG with DuckDB and MotherDuck

Build a local-first RAG for your Obsidian notes using DuckDB's vector search, then deploy it as a serverless web app with MotherDuck

More Control, Less Hassle: Self-Serve Recovery with Point-in-Time Restore

MotherDuck now supports point-in-time restores, making it easier than ever to roll back changes, undrop databases, and debug pipelines.

Microbatch: how to supercharge dbt-duckdb with the right incremental model

SQL Golf: Lessons from Quackmas 2025

From #N column references to boolean math, explore the extreme techniques used to solve the Quackmas 2025 SQL Golf challenge.

This Month in the DuckDB Ecosystem: January 2026

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.

We Built Our Employees a Wrapped—Using SQL and MotherDuck

We built a Spotify-style "Wrapped" for MotherDuck employees using our own platform. Discover the SQL queries, data tricks, and fun personas behind our internal leaderboard.

What If We Don't Need the Semantic Layer?

What if AI could discover your business logic by mining query history instead of requiring manual metric definitions? Explore how LLMs are replacing static semantic layers with systems that learn from actual usage.

A Quack-Packed Fall

MotherDuck spent fall on the conference circuit across Europe and the US. Here's what we presented and the pattern that emerged in nearly every conversation about analytics.

Stop Paying the Complexity Tax

My personal reflections from watching Jordan Tigani’s keynote "The Unbearable Bigness of Small Data" at Small Data SF. Most data warehouses are overbuilt for scale you'll never need. Learn how to stop paying the complexity tax.

Building the MotherDuck Remote MCP Server: A Journey Through Context Engineering and OAuth Proxies

How MotherDuck built a production-ready remote MCP server—from OAuth proxy challenges with Auth0 to tool design patterns that help AI agents query data warehouses effectively. Includes lessons from a hackathon where agents ran 4,000+

Building an answering machine

Discover how MotherDuck's MCP server enables true self-service analytics through AI agents. Query data in plain English with Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini—no SQL required.

MotherDuck Integrates with PlanetScale Postgres

Run analytics 200x faster on PlanetScale Postgres with MotherDuck integration. Keep millisecond transactions while pushing analytical queries to serverless compute.

Calling All SQL Sleuths: The Christmas Heist Awaits

Christmas presents have vanished! Use your SQL skills to solve the mystery on DBQuacks and win prizes. 15 challenges. One leaderboard.

Streaming Pipelines with MotherDuck and Artie

CDC streaming takes flight with Artie’s new MotherDuck destination.

This Month in the DuckDB Ecosystem: December 2025

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.

Simplicity of a Database, but the Speed of a Cache: OLAP Caches for DuckDB

Speed up slow dashboards without adding new infrastructure. Learn how DuckDB's caching extensions can drop query times from minutes to seconds.

Branch, Test, Deploy: A Git-Inspired Approach for Data

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.

Unstructured Document Analysis with Tensorlake and MotherDuck

Learn how to query unstructured documents with friendly SQL!

Small Data SF 2025: the Recap!

Dive into a recap of the world's hottest efficiency-themed data conference, Small Data SF!

DuckDB Ecosystem: November 2025

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.

4 Senior Data Engineers Answer 10 Top Reddit Questions

A great panel answering the most voted/commented data questions on Reddit

Faster Ducks

Benchmarks, efficiency, and how MotherDuck just got nearly 20% faster.

DuckDB 1.4.1 and DuckLake 0.3 Land in MotherDuck: New SQL Syntax, Iceberg Interoperability, and Performance Gains

MotherDuck now supports DuckDB 1.4.1 and DuckLake 0.3, with new SQL syntax, faster sorting, Iceberg interoperability, and more. Read on for the highlights from these major releases.

Why Python Developers Need DuckDB (And Not Just Another DataFrame Library)

Understand why a database is much more than just a dataframe library

DuckDB Ecosystem: October 2025

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.

MotherDuck is Landing in Europe! Announcing our EU Region

Serverless analytics built on DuckDB, running entirely in the EU.

PAINLESS GEOSPATIAL ANALYTICS USING MOTHERDUCK’S NATIVE INTEGRATION WITH GALILEO.WORLD

Discover how Galileo.world is revolutionizing geospatial analysis. Say goodbye to slow performance and complex setups. Analyze and visualize big data right in your browser.

DuckDB Ecosystem: September 2025

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.

Announcing Pg_duckdb Version 1.0

PostgreSQL gets a DuckDB-flavored power-up for faster analytical queries without ever leaving Postgres.

DuckDB × cognee: Run SQL Analytics Right Beside Your Graph-Native RAG

SQL analytics and graph-native retrieval together, eliminating the trade-off between fast analytics and one-off RAG retrievals.

Nine Keyboard Shortcuts for SQL Flow State

Tired of clicking? Master 9 essential SQL keyboard shortcuts to achieve a true flow state and make your data analysis faster and more joyful. Learn to run queries, comment, format, and even use AI without leaving your keyboard.

Why Semantic Layers Matter — and How to Build One with DuckDB

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

When Spark Meets DuckLake: Tooling You Know, Simplicity You Need

Learn how to combine Apache Spark’s scale with DuckLake’s simplicity to build a lakehouse with ACID, time travel, and schema evolution

Real-Time MySQL to MotherDuck Streaming with Streamkap: A Shift Left Architecture Guide

Build real-time MySQL to MotherDuck pipelines with Streamkap. Learn Shift Left architecture, streaming CDC, and how to replace batch ETL for instant analytics and customer dashboards.

DuckDB Ecosystem: August 2025

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.