Small Data, Big Impact: The Story Behind DuckDB // Hannes Mühleisen & Jordan Tigani // #202
Jan 9, 2024
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Navigate data management intricacies with Hannes Mühleisen and Jordan Tigani, the creators of DuckDB and MotherDuck. They discuss the controversial 'hallucinate' shirt, the origins of DuckDB and Oracle, CSV reading in data systems, addressing pain points, embracing community feedback, and the unique features and potential of DuckDB
DuckDB focuses on providing a great end-to-end experience by tackling pain points and improving the overall user journey, not just the speed and performance of database operations.
DuckDB actively engages with its community, collecting feedback and addressing reported problems to refine and enhance its features and user experience.
The partnership between DuckDB and Mother Duck is characterized by clear goals, separate leadership, and a shared focus on building high-quality products, emphasizing trust and alignment as they continue to grow.
Deep dives
The Creation of DuckDB and Mother Duck
In this podcast episode, the founder of DuckDB, Hannes, and the founder of Mother Duck, Jordan, discuss the creation and relationship between the two projects. DuckDB is described as an open-source, developer-friendly database that focuses on providing a great end-to-end experience. Jordan explains how he was drawn to DuckDB and its potential for scaling down, challenging the prevailing wisdom of always scaling out in database systems. The founders highlight their commitment to doing the right thing and improving the overall experience by tackling pain points, such as CSV parsing, and providing a seamless installation and data transfer process.
Focus on the Moments Before the Moments
DuckDB stands out by its emphasis on the moments before the main event, similar to how the experiences leading up to a concert can impact overall satisfaction. The founders highlight their dedication to optimizing the entire user experience, not just the speed and performance of database operations. They prioritize ease of use, tackling installation issues, CSV parsing, and other user pain points, allowing for a more enjoyable journey. By addressing these moments before the moment, DuckDB aims to create a more memorable and positive database experience for developers and users alike.
Engaging with the Community and Gathering Feedback
The founders value feedback from the DuckDB community and have designated team members responsible for collecting and analyzing user signals. They actively listen to community members, engaging in discussions and tracking common issues that arise. While they acknowledge the challenge of managing a growing community, they remain committed to addressing reported problems and constantly improving the platform. By actively interacting with the community and gaining insights from their experiences, DuckDB continues to refine and enhance its features and user experience.
Building a strong partnership
The podcast discusses the unique partnership between two companies, DuckDB and Mother Duck, and how they work together to provide both an open-source database (DuckDB) and a managed service (Mother Duck). The partnership is characterized by clear goals, separate leadership, and a shared focus on building high-quality products. The founders emphasize the importance of trust and alignment between the two companies, as well as the potential challenges that may arise as they continue to grow and as their incentives potentially diverge.
Innovating in the cloud and developer experience
The podcast explores the importance of innovating in the cloud and prioritizing an excellent developer experience. The hosts discuss how traditional databases have not kept up with innovation, and they aim to change that by building extraordinary databases and services. They highlight the benefits of having a local database running alongside the cloud service (Mother Duck) and how it enables creative and fast data visualizations, hybrid execution, and reactive user interfaces. They also emphasize the need for simplicity, minimal dependencies, and a seamless connection between the cloud and client for optimal user experience.
Prof. Dr. Hannes Mühleisen is a creator of the DuckDB database management system and Co-founder and CEO of DuckDB Labs.
Jordan is co-founder and chief duck-herder at MotherDuck, a startup building a serverless analytics platform based on DuckDB.
MLOps podcast #202 with Hannes Mühleisen, Co-Founder & CEO of DuckDB Labs and Jordan Tigani, Chief Duck-Herder at MotherDuck, Small Data, Big Impact: The Story Behind DuckDB.
// Abstract
Navigate the intricacies of data management with Jordan Tagani and Hannes Mühleisen, the creative geniuses behind DuckDB and MotherDuck. This deep dive unravels the game-changing principles behind DuckDB's creation, tackling the prevailing wisdom to passionately fill the gap for smaller data set management. Let's also discover MotherDuck's unique focus on providing an unprecedented developer experience and its innovative edge in visualization and data delivery. This episode is teeming with enlightening discussions about managing community feedback, funding, and future possibilities that should not be missed for any tech enthusiasts and data management practitioners.
// Bio
Hannes Mühleisen
Prof. Dr. Hannes Mühleisen is a creator of the DuckDB database management system and Co-founder and CEO of DuckDB Labs, a consulting company providing services around DuckDB. Hannes is also Professor of Data Engineering at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. His' main interest is analytical data management systems.
Jordan Tigani
Jordan is co-founder and chief duck-herder at MotherDuck, a startup building a serverless analytics platform based on DuckDB. He spent a decade working on Google BigQuery, as a founding engineer, book author, engineering leader, and product leader. More recently, as SingleStore’s Chief Product Officer, Jordan helped them build a cloud-native SaaS business. Jordan has also worked at Microsoft Research, the Windows Kernel team, and at a handful of star-crossed startups. His biggest claim to fame is predicting world cup matches using machine learning with a better record than Paul the Octopus.
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// Related Links
Websites:
https://duckdb.org/
https://motherduck.com/
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Connect with Hannes on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hfmuehleisen/
Connect with Jordan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordantigani/
Timestamps:
[00:00] Hannes and Jordan's preferred coffee
[01:30] Takeaways
[03:43] Swaggers in the house!
[07:13] Duck DB's inception
[09:38] Jordan's background
[12:28] Simplify Developer Experience
[17:54] Big Data Shift
[26:01] Creation of MotherDuck
[30:58] Duck DB and MotherDuck Partnership
[31:57] Incentive Alignment Concerns
[37:46] Building an incredible developer experience
[43:38] User Testing Lab
[47:18] Setting a higher standard
[49:22] The moments before the moment
[52:18] Gathering feedback and talking to the community
[54:30] MotherDuck Features
[1:00:19] Cloud Innovation for MotherDuck
[1:02:41] ML Engineers and DuckDB
[1:08:03] Wrap up
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