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.

Just Enough SQL to be Dangerous with AI

Learn essential SQL to verify AI-generated queries. Master SELECT, JOIN, and CTEs to safely analyze data with LLMs. Includes DuckDB examples and safety tips

MotherDuck's Latest AI Features: Smarter SQL Error Fixes and Natural Language Editing

Stay in flow with MotherDuck's latest features. Real-time SQL feedback and natural language editing.

Summer Data Engineering Roadmap

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.

Introducing Mega and Giga Ducklings: Scaling Up, Way Up

New MotherDuck instance sizes allow data warehousing users more flexibility for complex queries and transformations. Need more compute to scale up? Megas and Gigas will help!

Small Data SF Returns November 4-5, 2025: First Speakers Announced

Conference with two days of practical innovation on data and AI: workshops and talks from industry leaders, including Benn Stancil, Joe Reis, Adi Polak, George Fraser, Jordan Tigani, Holden Karau, Ravin Kumar, Sam Alexander and more!

Teaching Your LLM About DuckDB the Right Way: How to Fix Outdated Documentation

Learn how to keep LLMs updated with llms.txt and Cursor's docs feature.

This Month in the DuckDB Ecosystem: July 2025

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.

The Data Engineer Toolkit: Infrastructure, DevOps, and Beyond

Data engineers increasingly own DevOps. This guide breaks down the best DevOps and CI/CD tools, Kubernetes practices, data engineering platforms, workflow orchestration, and infrastructure strategies used in modern data stacks.

MotherDuck Managed DuckLakes Now in Preview: Scale to Petabytes

Preview support of MotherDuck includes both fully-managed DuckLake support and ability to bring your own bucket. Combined with MotherDuck's storage, you get both high-speed access to recent data and support for massive scale historical data.

I Made Cursor + AI Write Perfect SQL. Here's the Exact Setup

Stop debugging AI-generated SQL queries. Learn the exact Cursor + MotherDuck setup that makes AI write working SQL on the first try, with step-by-step instructions.

PostgreSQL and Ducks: The Perfect Analytical Pairing

Learn how to integrate PostgreSQL with DuckDB and MotherDuck for faster analytics. Compare DuckDB Postgres Extension, pg_duckdb, and CDC approaches with practical examples and best practices for each method.

Why REST and JDBC Are Killing Your Data Stack — Flight SQL to the Rescue

Understand how Flight SQL can speed up how your serve data with DuckDB

Getting Started with DuckLake: A New Table Format for Your Lakehouse

Learn how DuckLake simplifies metadata and brings fast, database-like features to your data lakehouse — with a hands-on example using DuckDB and PostgreSQL

DuckDB Ecosystem: June 2025

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.

DuckDB 1.3 Lands in MotherDuck: Performance Boosts, Even Faster Parquet, and Smarter SQL

DuckDB 1.3 has launched, with performance boosts, faster Parquet reads and writes, and new SQL syntax for ducking awesome analytics with full support in MotherDuck. Read on for highlights from this major release.

From BigQuery to DuckDB and MotherDuck : Efficient Local and Cloud Data Pipelines

Learn how to query load table from BigQuery to DuckDB and MotherDuck using SQL and Python!

A Duck Walks into a Lake

DuckDB introduces a new table format, what does it mean for the future of data lakes ?

Breaking the Excel-SQL Barrier: Leveraging DuckDB's Excel Extension

Now in MotherDuck & DuckDB, its never been easier to join in your data from spreadsheet sources.

The Open Lakehouse Stack: DuckDB and the Rise of Table Formats

Learn how DuckDB and open table formats like Iceberg power a fast, composable analytics stack on affordable cloud storage

Taming Wild CSVs: Advanced DuckDB Techniques for Data Engineers

How to ingest and query CSV files in DuckDB using auto-detection, sniffing, manual configuration and more.

Meet the New DuckDB Local UI: Analyze Data Visually, Right Where It Lives

Walkthrough of the new DuckDB UI features!

DuckDB Ecosystem: May 2025

DuckDB news: Metabase driver queries Parquet files directly. FlockMTL integrates LLMs into SQL workflows. Doom clone runs in DuckDB-WASM. Spatial wins top honors.

MotherDuck lands on Tableau Cloud: Live, Fast Analytics Unleashed

Use MotherDuck to power your Tableau Cloud, Server, and Desktop dashboards.

Instant SQL is here: Speedrun ad-hoc queries as you type

Type, see, tweak, repeat! Instant SQL is now in Preview in MotherDuck and the DuckDB Local UI. Bend reality with SQL superpowers to get real-time query results as you type.

The Data Engineer's Guide to Efficient Log Parsing with DuckDB/MotherDuck

How to Query JSON and Log Files with SQL Using DuckDB and MotherDuck

Streaming in the Fast Lane: Oracle CDC to MotherDuck Using Estuary

Ducks and estuaries go together. So it’s no surprise that MotherDuck, a cloud data warehouse, pairs well with Estuary, a data pipeline platform.

How MotherDuck Scales DuckDB in the Cloud vertically and horizontally

aka What the duck is a Duckling?

MCP + DuckDB: Connect AI Assistants to Your Data Pipelines

Use the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to connect Claude, Cursor, or other AI tools directly to DuckDB. Query data, generate SQL, and automate pipelines—without copy-pasting

DuckDB Ecosystem: April 2025

DuckDB news: Streaming support with new remote file caching. Community extensions expand real-time analytics. Event-driven processing patterns for data pipelines.

Simplifying IoT Analytics with MotherDuck

Exploring the sweet spot between simplicity and capability in data systems, one IoT hackathon at a time.

Prompting? That’s so 2024. Welcome to Quack-to-SQL.

Quack to SQL — our first AI model that understands duck sounds and translates them into queries.

Vector Technologies for AI: Extending Your Existing Data Stack

Understand when to use a vector database and how it differs from vector search engines.

Using MotherDuck at MotherDuck: Loading Data from Postgres with DuckDB

Duckfooding MotherDuck with the postgres scanner

DuckDB Ecosystem: March 2025

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.

DuckDB, MotherDuck, and Estuary: A Match Made for Your Analytics Architecture

Stream data to MotherDuck with Estuary

A Beginner’s Guide to Geospatial with DuckDB Spatial and MotherDuck

Unlock the power of geospatial analysis with DuckDB Spatial and MotherDuck, making location-based data processing faster, simpler, and more accessible for data engineers.

Effortless ETL for Unstructured Data with MotherDuck and Unstructured.io

In this tutorial, learn how to load unstructured data into MotherDuck with Unstructured.io to build modern data pipelines and business applications that turn unstructured data intro structured data.

Faster health data analysis with MotherDuck & Preswald

Faster health data analysis with MotherDuck & Preswald

How to build an interactive, shareable sentiment analysis dashboard with MotherDuck & Fabi.ai

Interactive, shareable sentiment analysis dashboard with MotherDuck & Fabi.ai

MotherDuck for Business Analytics: GDPR, SOC 2 Type II, Tiered Support, and New Plan Offerings

Introducing new features designed to better support businesses looking for their first data warehouse, including SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliance, tiered support, read scaling, and a new Business Plan.

DuckDB Ecosystem: February 2025

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.

MotherDuck Now Supports DuckDB 1.2: Faster, Friendlier, Better Performance

DuckDB 1.2 has launched, with improvements in performance, the SQL experience, CSV handling, and scalability - all fully supported in MotherDuck!

Why CSV Files Won’t Die and How DuckDB Conquers Them

Learn how you can pragmatically use DuckDB to parse any CSVs

The Data Engineering Toolkit: Essential Tools for Your Machine

Master the essential data engineering toolkit—Linux commands, Docker, Python, SQL, and developer tools. A practical guide to the tools every DE needs.

Local dev and cloud prod for faster dbt development

Spark the Joy of beautiful local development workflows with MotherDuck & dbt

DuckDB Ecosystem: January 2025

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.

What’s New: Streamlined User Management, Metadata, and UI Enhancements

December’s feature roundup is focused on improving the user experience on multiple fronts. Introducing the User Management REST API, the Table Summary, and a read-only MD_INFORMATION_SCHEMA for metadata.

We made a fake duck game: compete to win!

Spot the fake (AI generated) duck to win!

Window Functions in Motherduck: An Analytical Approach

Supercharge your window functions with MotherDuck SQL

Why web developers should care about analytical databases

Learn how analytical database can help your web app, with MotherDuck and the native integration with Vercel

Separating Storage and Compute in DuckDB

Why separate storage and compute in DuckDB, how we do it in MotherDuck to enable sharing and future work.

LLM-driven data pipelines with prompt() in MotherDuck and dbt

Leveraging LLM workflow in your data pipelines

Visualizing text embeddings using MotherDuck and marimo

Visualizing text embeddings using MotherDuck and marimo

This Month in the DuckDB Ecosystem: December 2024

DuckDB news: Query Bluesky social data via SQL. LLMs clean CRM data inside queries. Google Sheets extension launches. DuckDB-WASM powers sql-workbench.com browser IDE.

The Serverless Backend for Analytics: Introducing MotherDuck’s Native Integration on Vercel Marketplace

MotherDuck's native integration is now available on Vercel Marketplace. Developers can finally streamline their application maintenance overhead when building embedded analytics components and data apps. Start building with templates and a demo app!

Introducing Read Scaling

Read Scaling is now in preview! Read Scaling improves DuckDB SQL query performance by scaling out to multiple DuckDB instances, known as Read Scaling replicas. It is useful to speed up BI dashboards and data apps significantly.

Non-Profits <3 Small Data’s ROI

Learn how DoSomething, the premier platform fueling young people to change the world and actively shape the future of their communities, decided to adopt MotherDuck as their analytics data warehouse for efficient, high ROI analytics without the overhead.

Improved Control and Ergonomics on MotherDuck

November's Feature Roundup focuses on efficient query control and ergonomics. Now that's something to flap your wings about! Read on for updates on query management, in-memory performance, and connection management.

How to Extract Analytics from Bluesky, the New Open Social Network

Discover how to build data pipelines to get insights from Bluesky

From Data Lake to Lakehouse: Can DuckDB be the best portable data catalog?

Discover how catalog became crucial for Lakehouse and how DuckDB can help as a catalog

15+ Companies Using DuckDB in Production: A Comprehensive Guide

Discover how companies are running DuckDB in production

Quacking at the Edge: DuckDB on Raspberry Pi

Using MotherDuck’s Dual Query execution on a Raspberry Pi to play a quack sound when users sign up for our service.

This Month in the DuckDB Ecosystem: November 2024

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.

The Data Warehouse powered by DuckDB SQL

Learn how DuckDB and MotherDuck transform data into business insights. DuckDB’s fast SQL processing meets MotherDuck’s cloud integration, creating a flexible, powerful data warehouse solution to solve complex business challenges and drive impact.

DuckDB Tutorial For Beginners

Learn DuckDB from scratch: install in 2 minutes, set up VSCode, and build your first SQL analytics project. No database experience required.

pg_duckdb beta release : Even faster analytics in Postgres

pg_duckdb makes elephants fly, marking its first release.

You asked, We Listened: Sharing, UI and Performance Improvements

Recently-launched features in the MotherDuck data warehouse: preview result cell contents UI, dual execution performance improvements, auto update of data shared within your organization (or globally!)

Small Data is bigger (and hotter 🔥) than ever

Catch up on the latest developments around simple, scalable workflows for Real data volumes from the first Small Data SF!

Union and MotherDuck's Orchestrated Approach to Advanced Analytics

Leverage MotherDuck & Union to orchestrate advanced analytics flows, AI & LLMs

Introducing the prompt() Function: Use the Power of LLMs with SQL!

We make your database smarter with small language model (and LLM) support in SQL

The Enterprise Case for DuckDB: 5 Key Categories and Why to Use it

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. 

Performant dbt pipelines with MotherDuck

Learn how to take your dbt pipelines to new heights with MotherDuck. This blog walks through a recap of our recent dbt + MotherDuck workshop from Small Data SF. Happy building!