databow: a Rust CLI to query any database with an ADBC driver

(columnar.tech)

96 points by hckshr2 days ago

7 comments

ComputerGuru1 hour ago
ADBC: <a href="https://arrow.apache.org/docs/format/ADBC.html" rel="nofollow">https://arrow.apache.org/docs/format/ADBC.html</a>Seems like a columnar version of ODBC, for OLAP instead of OLTP.
password43213 hours ago
Golang: <a href="https://github.com/xo/usql" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/xo/usql</a>Reviewing the issues and PRs there provides a clue what to expect as this project matures.
- pjmlp1 hour ago
 Ouch, CVE party.
whinvik5 hours ago
Sorry, just trying to understand. Why would I use this over duckdb. duckdb already has plugins for a lot of databases. Is the syntax the advantage?
- f311a5 hours ago
 ClickHouse also supports a lot of data sources and has a local mode where you just use a single binary with local-only access.Coincidentally, I wrote an article today on how I use it for similar scenarios. It can fetch from S3, multiple databases at once, and so on.And you get all the benefits of a database when you need to join or postprocess data from multiple sources.<a href="https://rushter.com/blog/clickhouse-data-processing/" rel="nofollow">https://rushter.com/blog/clickhouse-data-processing/</a>
- freakynit2 hours ago
 It's more of a common database cli/shell which uses a well defined, and fast, ADBC protocol. You are basically freed from DuckDB's internal handling/runtime of query for various databases. Not to mention, this has vastly more supported databases.With databow, the query still runs on the target database (unline duckdb), but you get one consistent CLI across different databases: connection profiles, output formats, history, scripting, and import/export behavior.This is genuinely useful for humans (For example, I regularly juggle 6-7 different database, oltp, olap, search and key-value mixed), and even more useful for AI coding agents, because they don't have to learn and juggle a different CLI and set of flags for every database.
- bunsenhoneydew5 hours ago
 It’s going to have a very big hill to climb if it’s playing in a space where duckdb already has a hold. Duck has probably been my favourite technology find in the last few years. Awesome tech.I’ll still check this out though.
 - iconicBark5 hours ago
 I agree
- data_ders3 hours ago
 I think the advantage is simplicity. Why connect first to duckdb and attach the db when you can query it directly with ADBC which is guaranteed to be fast
 - f311a2 hours ago
 You don’t need to connect to duckdb, it’s just a process that you spawn.
- gigatexal2 hours ago
 This is my question too
wodenokoto4 hours ago
My biggest pain point with using different cli to connect to different databases is that they all do things like listing tables differently.Another nice feature one would want from such a program is of course auto complete.
- data_ders3 hours ago
 Yeah for me standardization is the big win. But not just output formatting but cli commands and a guarantee that they’re as past as possible given that all the connectors use ADBC
ifh-hn4 hours ago
This is excellent! I'm not a data engineer or SRE or whatever other commenters have mentioned. But part of my job is accessing data in various formats from various places, mostly offline. This in gonna be part of my toolset and I can pipe the output into other tools like nushell too.
aleda1455 hours ago
Cool! But as a data engineer I don't know when I would ever use this. Getting data into a centralized place so it can be joined and queried easily is like prio 1 for any data team.I'm sure SREs will really love me doing expensive adhoc queries against production postgres /sI've yet to work in enterprises big enough to have multi cloud data warehouses though, maybe it's more useful in that setting?
- tonnydourado4 hours ago
 As a consultant data engineer (ish), I think it has potential. You're right that any company doing data analytics is gonna be prioritizing a single source of truth and a unified platform, but each one will choose a different set of tools, which I'll have to learn, install, and even teach, for each new client. If I can use this to both explore AND implement stuff for clients regardless of their underlying database, that would be a pretty significant win.
 - aleda1454 hours ago
 That's a great point! "Speed to insight" feels more important than ever
- wodenokoto4 hours ago
 Isn’t it useful for when you are getting things into a central DW?E.g, you don’t need a million tools to connect to the million different application databases when inspecting sources as part of setting up pipelines.
 - jnewton_dev3 hours ago
 Thanks for sharing — this clears up a misconception I've had for a while.
godisagirl4 hours ago
[flagged]