Matthias Niehoff – DuckDB beyond the notebook #bbuzz

More: https://2026.berlinbuzzwords.de/sessi... Speaker: Matthias Niehoff Most people know DuckDB as a fast analytics tool for notebooks and scripts. But embedded OLAP enables much more: browser-based analytics via WebAssembly, serverless data processing, and lightweight data apps — without heavy infrastructure. This talk shows how DuckDB changes the way we build data-driven applications. SQLite as an embedded database is known by everyone — easy to integrate into any application, it's the most widely used database in the world. DuckDB is also an embedded database, but with a focus on analytical queries rather than transactional workloads. Today, DuckDB has evolved into a blazingly fast query engine that runs almost everywhere. This opens up new architectural possibilities for building data-driven applications — especially when analytics need to be delivered directly to end users through interactive reports, dashboards, or exploratory tools. In this talk, I'll use minimal slides and plenty of live demos to show how developers can build fast and lean data applications with DuckDB. We'll explore scenarios including browser-based analytics powered by WebAssembly, serverless functions processing data from cloud storage, and embedded analytics in traditional applications. We'll also examine the architectural implications: how embedded OLAP changes data architectures by bringing compute closer to the data, enabling 1.5-tier and cache-layer patterns that eliminate the need for separate analytics infrastructure. Attendees will learn what DuckDB is and how it works, how it differs from other embedded databases, and how to use it to build data-driven applications that go well beyond the notebook. ### Follow us on Social Media and join the Community! Mastodon: https://floss.social/@berlinbuzzwords LinkedIn:   / berlin-buzzwords   Website: https://berlinbuzzwords.de Mail: [email protected] Berlin Buzzwords is an event by Plain Schwarz – https://plainschwarz.com