DuckDB: How to Build 100x Faster Analytics Databases (with Co-Creator Hannes Mühleisen)

SQLite could do with a little competition, so when I invited the co-creator of DuckDB in to talk, I thought we'd be discussing the perils of trying to build a new in-process database engine. I quickly realised things went much deeper than just a tech refresh. Hannes Mühleisen joins me this week to blend his academic credentials as a database researcher with his vehement need to make that research practical. And so we dive into what modern database literature has to say on making queries faster, more parallelizable, and closer to the metal, and how it all comes together in a user-friendly package that’s found its way into my day-to-day workload, and might well help out yours. If you’re curious about the gory details of database queries, how they can take advantage of modern hardware, or how all that research actually turns into a useful tool, Hannes has some great answers. -- DuckDB: https://duckdb.org/ Database Systems Book: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/d... Kris’ first computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ZX... Volcano Query Evaluation System [pdf]: https://paperhub.s3.amazonaws.com/dac... Morsel Query Engine [pdf]: https://cs.brown.edu/~kayhan/papers/m... Unnesting Arbitrary Queries [pdf]: https://cs.emis.de/LNI/Proceedings/Pr... Papers Hannes' team have published: https://duckdb.org/why_duckdb#peer-re... DuckDB on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@duckdb Kris on Twitter:   / krisajenkins   Kris on LinkedIn:   / krisjenkins   Kris on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins -- #softwaredevelopment #podcast #programming #database #duckdb #sql #sqlite 0:00 Intro 2:15 Podcast 8:15 From Professor to Implementor 15:28 Deciding What To Build 22:43 How does DuckDB work? 42:50 Parallelization 1:10:18 A real world use-case 1:18:59 Outro

Practical Applications for DuckDB (with Simon Aubury & Ned Letcher)
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Practical Applications for DuckDB (with Simon Aubury & Ned Letcher)

Introducing DuckLake
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Introducing DuckLake

DuckDB Co-Creator Hannes Mühleisen on Why Single-Node Beats Distributed
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DuckDB Co-Creator Hannes Mühleisen on Why Single-Node Beats Distributed

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SQLite: How it works, by Richard Hipp

DuckDB, Apache Arrow, & the Future of Data Engineering w/ Rusty Conover | S2E3
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DuckDB, Apache Arrow, & the Future of Data Engineering w/ Rusty Conover | S2E3

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InfluxDB: The Evolution of a Time Series Database (with Paul Dix)

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How DuckLake Simplifies Lakehouse Architecture ft. Jordan Tigani & Hannes Mühleisen

Analytics for not-so-big data with DuckDB - David Ostrovsky - NDC Oslo 2025
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Analytics for not-so-big data with DuckDB - David Ostrovsky - NDC Oslo 2025

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What can game programming teach us about databases? (with Tyler Cloutier)

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Hannes Mühleisen - Data Wrangling [for Python or R] Like a Boss With DuckDB

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Designing Data-Intensive Applications: Chapters 1 and 2

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How do refactoring tools work? (with Jonathan Schneider)

DuckDB + DuckLake: Building a Lightweight Data Lakehouse Without Heavy Infrastructure
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DuckDB + DuckLake: Building a Lightweight Data Lakehouse Without Heavy Infrastructure

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Extending Postgres for High Performance Analytics (with Philippe Noël)

Leaving The Two Tier Architecture Behind by Hannes Muehleisen (Dijkstra Award 2024)
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Leaving The Two Tier Architecture Behind by Hannes Muehleisen (Dijkstra Award 2024)

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What's Worth Knowing In AI Right Now? (with Henry Garner)

DuckDBT: Not a database or a dbt adapter but a secret third thing – DuckCon #3 (San Francisco)
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DuckDBT: Not a database or a dbt adapter but a secret third thing – DuckCon #3 (San Francisco)

Semantic Search: A Deep Dive Into Vector Databases (with Zain Hasan)
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Semantic Search: A Deep Dive Into Vector Databases (with Zain Hasan)

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Zig 2026: No-AI Policy, $670K Foundation, Left GitHub & Why Zig Isn’t 1.0 - Andrew Kelley Explains

22 - DuckDB Internals (CMU Advanced Databases / Spring 2023)
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22 - DuckDB Internals (CMU Advanced Databases / Spring 2023)