Enso Analytics 2025.3 introduces in-built DuckDB functionality, which is a gamechanger for what the product can do.
In this series of blog posts I will discuss what this means for you as a user and why Enso and DuckDB are such a good union.
But before we get to what this means for Enso first some background on DuckDB.
Back in 2022, when I was working at another data analytics company and we were in the middle of a number of company acquisitions, the CTO from one of those acquisitions came to me (as one of the principal engineers for the data engines) and said he thought we should think about replacing our internal data engine with DuckDB. Now if you haven't heard of DuckDB (or have heard of it but aren't quite sure what it is) then we should take a quick diversion to what DuckDB is.
From the duckdb.org website: DuckDB is a
- Fast
- Analytical
- In-process
- Open-source
- Portable
database system.
A lot of words there, but what do they all mean? Let's break it down. And we will start at the end.
Database System
It is a database system. Great! So like Snowflake? Or Postgres? Fundamentally yes, with some key differences that we will get to later, at its core it is a database. It stores data in tables and you can query data from those tables using the standard language of the database world: SQL.
So nothing too interesting here, Enso already had support for running its processes inside of Postgres and Snowflake so this is just another DB that it now supports? Kind of. Let's look at some of the other features from the DuckDB website to see why DuckDB might be more than that.
Fast
Great! Everyone wants a fast database right? But equally fast is relative and no database manufacturer is going to say their database is slow. And actually the real question is "Fast at what?"
Analytical
Now this one is more interesting. Here at Enso we are all about analytics (it is in our name!), but why do DuckDB call that out as their second point on their home page? Well what DuckDB mean is their database is designed for analytic use cases, and taking this in conjunction with the fast bullet their database engine is designed to be fast for analytical use cases.
You can read more about that over at DuckDB https://duckdb.org/why_duckdb#fast.
In-process
Now this comes back to why is DuckDB different to Snowflake or Postgres? When they say DuckDB is in-process it means it can run as part of the hosting application (in our case Enso Analytics). As opposed to Snowflake say which runs in the cloud or Postgres which typically is installed on a server somewhere.
Open-Source and Portable
Both Enso Analytics and DuckDB are open source and can run on Windows, Macs and Linux machines, another checkmark on our list of why we are a perfect match.
Back to 2022 and my meeting with the CTO from the acquired company. My first question was why? To which the answer was all the great features, performance and capabilities. Which sounded great, but we had just spent the last few years building our own highly performant data engine. The second question was how? And this is where it got harder for that other company as their data engine didn't directly translate to SQL and actually at times deliberately worked differently to other database engines out there so compatibility was going to be a nightmare. And that coupled with the fact we were already trying to combine at lot of different acquired technologies meant we really didn't need to throw yet another one into the mixing pot.
So why is it a different story here at Enso Analytics?
Well the biggest reason is when we built the Enso product we built it to be compatible with other database technologies not different to them. This means that we can use the same set of components to run In-Memory, or in Snowflake or Postgres... And now in DuckDB. Of course not all databases support the same functionality: the Enso application allows you to do as much in database as is possible, and gracefully tell the user when something is not possible in database, and it is time to move the data in memory. This meant the framework for integrating DuckDB was there and ready to go. The how was obvious.
And then to the why. For that we go back to the list of DuckDB features and see how each matches against the Enso product.
✅ A fast analytics database - Enso is designed to do analytical work with data, so a fast analytics database is a perfect fit.
✅ In-process - This means DuckDB can be packaged in as part of the Enso installation. You don't need to set up anything apart from installing Enso and you have the power of DuckDB behind an easy to use visual data analytics programming language.
✅ Open-Source and Portable - DuckDB and Enso Analytics both share the same philosophy of being open source and work on any platform.
Oh and did I mention that DuckDB has a rich set of spatial capabilities? So as of 2025.3 Enso Analytics for the first time has spatial support. But more on that in a future post. In fact the next post looks at what new features DuckDB brings to Enso.
If you want to try it yourself download a free copy today at EnsoAnalytics.com
