Is DuckDB Ready for Primetime? | Hacker News Reader

Is DuckDB Ready for Primetime?

exasol.com

30 pointsastigsen10 comments

Whenever I see lots of comments from newly created accounts praising a product I think: Astroturfing?

But then I start thinking about how easy it would be to try to ruin a competitor's reputation by "false flag" astroturfing on their posts...

Wow, didn’t expect that! I always thought DuckDB was unbeatable on a single machine, but seeing Exasol not just keep up but actually crush it. Being 4× faster even without a cluster is really wild. The fact that its MPP DNA translates so well to a single box really shows how mature the optimizer and execution engine are. Hats off! Exasol isn’t just “good at scale,” it’s seriously impressive even in the playground DuckDB was built for.

Absolutely! DuckDB’s reputation for single-machine speed is well-earned, but seeing Exasol outpace it—without even leveraging a cluster—really highlights how much thought has gone into its engine. It’s cool to see that “big league” architecture pay off, even in the kind of scenarios where DuckDB usually shines.

Surprised to see these results given how leight-weight DuckDB is. However, I'd argue that "primetime" is not just about speed, but also UX where DuckDB definitely shines.

That’s a fair point—DuckDB’s lightweight design and intuitive UX are big reasons it’s gained traction, especially for analytics on the desktop or in embedded scenarios. But when it comes to “primetime” in the sense of enterprise-grade analytics—think massive concurrency, complex workloads, and scaling across distributed environments— Exasol I see as one of the solution.

DuckDB is fantastic for local analytics and prototyping, but when your needs move into enterprise territory—where performance, reliability, and manageability at scale become critical.

Interesting read. Would love to see a full TPC-H comparison if the performance difference is already that obvious in the PDS benchmark.

Totally agree—seeing such a gap in the PDS benchmark makes me wonder how things would look on a full TPC-H run in the future. If Exasol’s performance scales the same way, it could be eye-opening!

Exasol is ready for Primetime for sure. German analytics Powerengine

I would love to see a comparison with 1 TB, 5 TB, 10 TB or even more data. This is what makes it really interesting

Is this true? Has anyone actually tested and confirmed?

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