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Instant SQL for results as you type in DuckDB UI
- ryguyrg 1y agoIn DuckDB UI and MotherDuck. Awesome video of feature: https://youtu.be/aFDUlyeMBc8 https://youtu.be/aFDUlyeMBc8 Disclaimer: I’m a co-founder at MotherDuck.
- theLiminator 1y agoCurious if there has been any thought given to open sourcing the UI? Of course there's no obligation to though!
- hamilton 1y agoWe do have plans. It's a question of effort, not business / philosophy.
- rastignack 1y agoIt’s good to know it. I live in a heavily regulated workplace and our data usage is constantly monitored. Good to know a totally offline tool is being considered. Thanks for the great tool BTW.
- theLiminator 1y agoThank you, that's awesome to hear!
- d0100 1y agoThat would be nice as it would spare us the effort of replicating the UI, half-baked as we can
- rancar2 1y agoThanks for sharing this update with the world and including it on the local ui too. Feature request: enable the tuning of when Instant SQL is run and displayed. The erroring out with flashing updates at nearly every keystoke while expanding on a query is distracting for me personally (my brain goes into troubleshooting vs thinking mode). I like the feature (so I will keep it on by default), but I’d like to have a few modes for it depending on my working context (specifically tuning of update frequency at separation characters [space, comma], end of statement [semicolon/newline], and injections [paste/autocomplete]).
- hamilton 1y agoGreat feedback! Thanks. We agree w/ the red errors. It's not helpful when it feels like your editor is screaming at you.
- strgcmc 1y agoThis is probably stupid, but at the hope of helping others through exposing my own ignorance -- I'm having trouble actually installing and running the preview... I've downloaded the preview release duckdb binary itself, then when I try to run "duckdb -ui", I'm getting this error: Extension Autoloading Error: An error occurred while trying to automatically install the required extension 'ui': Failed to download extension "ui" at URL "http://extensions.duckdb.org/0069af20ab/osx_arm64/ui.duckdb_extension.gz http://extensions.duckdb.org/0069af20ab/osx_arm64/ui.duckdb_..." (HTTP 403) Extension "ui" is an existing extension. Is it looking to download the preview version of the extension, but getting blocked/unauthorized (hence the 403 forbidden response)? Or is there something about the auto-loading behavior that I'm supposed to disable maybe?
- 1egg0myegg0 1y agoSorry you hit that! This is actually already working on version 1.2.2. Could you install that version? That should get you going for the moment! We will dig into what you ran into.
- strgcmc 1y agoAll good, v1.2.2 works fine, thank you!
- carlineng 1y agoI just watched the author of this feature and blog post give a talk at the DataCouncil conference in Oakland, and it is obvious what a huge amount of craft, ingenuity, and care went into building it. Congratulations to Hamilton and the MotherDuck team for an awesome launch!
- ryguyrg 1y agowohoo! glad you noticed that. Hamilton is amazing.
- wodenokoto 1y agoIs that talk available online?
- carlineng 1y agoNot yet, but I believe the DataCouncil staff recorded it and will post it to their YouTube channel sometime in the next few weeks: https://www.youtube.com/@DataCouncil/videos https://www.youtube.com/@DataCouncil/videos
- XCSme 1y agoI hope this doesn't work with DELETE queries.
- ryguyrg 1y agoROFL
- codetrotter 1y agoROFL FROM jokes WHERE thats_a_new_one;
- falcor84 1y agoMaybe in the next version they could also implement support for DROP, with autocorrect for the nearest (not yet dropped) table name.
- clgeoio 1y agoLLM powered queries that run in Agent mode so it can answer questions of your data before you know what to ask.
- XCSme 1y agoThat's actually not a bad idea, to have LLM autocomplete when you write queries, especially if you first add a comment at the top saying what you want to achieve: // Select all orders for users registered in last year, and compute average earnings per user SELECT ...
- ako 1y agoThat already works in windsurf, I’ve created unit tests in go, where I just wrote a short comment in the unit test what data to query and windsurf would autocomplete with the full sql.
- 1y ago
- ayhanfuat 1y agoCTE inspection is amazing. I spend too much time doing that manually.
- hamilton 1y agoMe too (author of the post here). In fact, I was watching a seasoned data engineer at MotherDuck show me how they would attempt to debug a regex in a CTE. As a longtime SQL user, I felt the pain immediately; haven't we all been there before? Instant SQL followed from that.
- RobinL 1y agoAgree, definitely amazing feature. In the Python API you can get somewhere close with this kind of thing: input_data = duckdb.sql("SELECT * FROM read_parquet('...')") step_1 = duckdb.sql("SELECT ... FROM input_data JOIN ...") step_2 = duckdb.sql("SELECT ... FROM step_1") final = duckdb.sql("SELECT ... FROM step_2;")
- ako 1y agoIn datagrip you can select part of a query and execute it to see its result.
- sannysanoff 1y agoPlease finally add q language with proper integration to your tables so that our precious q-SQL is available there. Stop reinventing the wheel, let's at least catch up to the previous generation (in terms of convenience). Make the final step.
- datadrivenangel 1y agoWhat is q-SQL?
- indeyets 1y agohttps://code.kx.com/q/basics/qsql/ https://code.kx.com/q/basics/qsql/
- cess11 1y agoMaybe they're busy so it might be faster if you do it instead.
- sannysanoff 1y agoMy intention is good. I advise right way. It's not an offense. (I have my job to do. They may consider doing what I say, it will be then their job to do)
- makotech221 1y agoDelete From dbo.users w... (129304 rows affected)
- CurtHagenlocher 1y agoThe blog specifically says that they're getting the SQL AST so presumably they would not execute something like a DELETE.
- hamilton 1y agoCorrect. We only enable fast previews for SELECT statements, which is the actual hard problem. This said, at some point we're likely to also add support for previewing a CTAS before you actually run it.
- buremba 1y agoI remember your demos of visualizing the CTEs of a huge query in the editor. I'm looking forward to trying it!
- makotech221 1y agoCool. Now, there's this thing called a joke...
- wodenokoto 1y agoWill this be available in duckdb -ui ? Is mother duck editor features available on-prem? My understanding is that mother duck is a data warehouse sass.
- 1egg0myegg0 1y agoIt is already available in the local DuckDB UI! Let us know what you think! -Customer software engineer at MotherDuck
- ukuina 1y agoDoes local DuckDB UI work without an internet connection?
- wodenokoto 1y agoI’m pretty sure it doesn’t. My understanding is it gets downloaded at startup and then runs offline. Kinda like regex101, draw.io or excalidraw.
- jephly 1y ago(DuckDB UI developer here) It doesn't currently - the UI assets are loaded at runtime - but we do have an offline mode planned. See https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb-ui/issues/62 https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb-ui/issues/62.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mritchie712 1y agoa fun function in duckdb (which I think they're using here) is `json_serialize_sql`. It returns a JSON AST of the SQL SELECT json_serialize_sql('SELECT 2'); [ { "json_serialize_sql('SELECT 2')": { "error": false, "statements": [ { "node": { "type": "SELECT_NODE", "modifiers": [], "cte_map": { "map": [] }, "select_list": [ { "class": "CONSTANT", "type": "VALUE_CONSTANT", "alias": "", "query_location": 7, "value": { "type": { "id": "INTEGER", "type_info": null }, "is_null": false, "value": 2 } } ], "from_table": { "type": "EMPTY", "alias": "", "sample": null, "query_location": 18446744073709551615 }, "where_clause": null, "group_expressions": [], "group_sets": [], "aggregate_handling": "STANDARD_HANDLING", "having": null, "sample": null, "qualify": null }, "named_param_map": [] } ] } } ]
- hamilton 1y agoIndeed, we are! We worked with DuckDB Labs to add the query_location information, which we're also enriching with the tokenizer to draw a path through the AST to the cursor location. I've been wanting to do this since forever, and now that we have it, there's actually a long tail of inspection / debugging / enrichment features we can add to our SQL editor.
- krferriter 1y ago
- hk1337 1y agoFirst time seeing the from at the top of the query and I am not sure how I feel about it. It seems useful but I am so used to select...from. I'm assuming it's more of a user preference like commas in front of the field instead of after field?
- hamilton 1y agoYou can use any variation of DuckDB valid syntax that you want! I prefer to put from first just because I think it's better, but Instant SQL works with traditional select __ from __ queries.
- ltbarcly3 1y agoYes it comes from a desire to impose intuition from other contexts onto something instead of building intuition with that thing. SQL is a declarative language. The ordering of the statements was carefully thought through. I will say it's harmless though, the clauses don't have any dependency in terms of meaning so it's fine to just allow them to be reordered in terms of the meaning of the query, but that's true of lots and lots of things in programming and just having a convention is usually better than allowing anything. For example, you could totally allow this to be legal: def for x in whatever: print(x) print_whatever(whatever): There's nothing ambiguous about it, but why? Like if you are used to seeing it one way it just makes it more confusing to read, and if you aren't used to seeing it the normal way you should at least somewhat master something before you try to improve it through cosmetic tweaks. I think you see this all the time, people try to impose their own comfort onto things for no actual improvement.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- whstl 1y agoNo, it comes from wanting to make autocompletion easier and to make variable scoping/method ordering make sense within LINQ. It is an actual improvement in this regard. LINQ popularized it and others followed. It does what it says. Btw: saying that "people try to impose their own comfort" is uncalled for.
- ltbarcly3 1y agoThis is such a bizarre feature.
- hamilton 1y agoWhat about it is bizarre?
- pixl97 1y agoIt's probably different for duckdb, but from something like Microsoft SQL tossing off these random queries at a database of any size could have some weird performance impacts. For example statistics on columns you don't want them on, unindexed queries with slow performance, temp tables being dumped out to disk, etc.
- hamilton 1y agoI agree; one thing that is neat about Instant SQL is for many reasons, you can't do this with in any other DBMS. You really need DuckDB's specific architecture and ergonomics.
- thenaturalist 1y agoOn first glance possibly, on second glance not at all. First, repeat data analyst queries are a usage driver in SQL DBs. Think iterating the code and executing again. Another huge factor in the same vein is running dev pipelines with limited data to validate a change works when modelling complex data. This is currently a FE feature, but underneath lies effective caching. The underlying tech is driving down usage cost which is a big thing for data practitioners.
- Vaslo 1y agoI moved from pandas and SQLite to polars and DuckDB. Such an improvement in these new tools.
- arsalanb 1y agoCheck out livedocs.com, we built a notebook around Polars and DuckDB (disclaimer: I'm the founder)
- potatohead24 1y agoIt's neat but the CTE selection bit errors out more often than not & erroneously selects more than the current CTE
- hamilton 1y agoCan you say more? Where does it error out? Sounds like a bug; if you could post an example query, I bet we can fix that.
- jpambrun 1y agoI really like duckdb's notebooks for exploration and this feature makes them even more awesome, but the fact that I can't share, export or commit them into a git repo feels extremely limiting. It's neat-ish that it dodfoods and store them in a duckdb database. It even seems to stores historical versions, but I can't really do anything with it..
- hamilton 1y agoDefinitely something we want too! (I'm the author / lead for the UI)
- RyanHamilton 1y agoLocal markdown file based sql notebooks: https://www.timestored.com/sqlnotebook https://www.timestored.com/sqlnotebook Disclaimer: I'm the author
- akshayka 1y agoYou can try marimo notebooks, which are stored as pure Python and support SQL cells through duckdb. (I’m one of its authors.) https://github.com/marimo-team/marimo https://github.com/marimo-team/marimo
- crazygringo 1y agoEdit: never mind, thanks for the replies! I had missed the part where it showed visualizing subqueries, which is what I wanted but didn't think it did. This looks very helpful indeed!
- Noumenon72 1y agoThe article says it does subqueries: > Getting the AST is a big step forward, but we still need a way to take your cursor position in the editor and map it to a path through this AST. Otherwise, we can’t know which part of the query you're interested in previewing. So we built some simple tools that pair DuckDB’s parser with its tokenizer to enrich the parse tree, which we then use to pinpoint the start and end of all nodes, clauses, and select statements. This cursor-to-AST mapping enables us to show you a preview of exactly the SELECT statement you're working on, no matter where it appears in a complex query.
- hamilton 1y agoYou should read the post! This is what the feature does.
- geysersam 1y ago> What would be helpful would be to be able to visualize intermediate results -- if my cursor is inside of a subquery, show me the results of that subquery. But that's exactly what they show in the blog post??
- jakozaur 1y agoIt would be even better if SQL had pipe syntax. SQL is amazing, but its ordering isn’t intuitive, and only CTEs provide a reliable way to preview intermediate results. With pipes, each step could clearly show intermediate outputs. Example: FROM orders |> WHERE order_date >= '2024-01-01' |> AGGREGATE SUM(order_amount) AS total_spent GROUP BY customer_id |> WHERE total_spent > 1000 |> INNER JOIN customers USING(customer_id) |> CALL ENRICH.APOLLO(EMAIL > customers.email) |> AGGREGATE COUNT(*) high_value_customer GROUP BY company.country
- metadata 1y agoGoogle SQL has it now: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/simplify-your-sql-with-pipe-syntax-in-bigquery-and-cloud-logging https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/simpli... It's pretty neat: FROM mydataset.Produce |> WHERE sales > 0 |> AGGREGATE SUM(sales) AS total_sales, COUNT(\*) AS num_sales GROUP BY item; Edit: formatting
- crooked-v 1y agoI suspect you'll like PRQL: https://github.com/PRQL/prql https://github.com/PRQL/prql
- hamilton 1y agoObviously one advantage of SQL is everyone knows it. But conceptually, I agree. I think [1]Malloy is also doing some really fantastic work in this area. This is one of the reasons I'm excited about DuckDB's upcoming [2]PEG parser. If they can pull it off, we could have alternative dialects that run on DuckDB. [1] https://www.malloydata.dev/ https://www.malloydata.dev/ [2] https://duckdb.org/2024/11/22/runtime-extensible-parsers.html https://duckdb.org/2024/11/22/runtime-extensible-parsers.htm...
- xdkyx 1y agoDoes it work as fast with more complicated queries with joins/havings and large tables?
- porridgeraisin 1y agoThis is just so good. I wish redash had this...
- jwilber 1y agoAmazing work. Motherduck and the duckdb ecosystem have done a great job of gathering talented engineers with great taste. Craftsmanship may be the word I’m looking for - I always look forward to their releases. I spent the first two quarters of 2024 working on observability for a build-the-plane-as-you-fly-it style project. I can’t express how useful the cte preview would have been for debugging.
- almosthere 1y agoWow, I used DuckDB in my last job, and have to say it was impressive for its speed. Now it's more useful than ever.
- motoboi 1y agoDuckDb is missing a killer feature by not having a pipe syntax like kusto or google's pipe query syntax. Why is it a killer feature? First of all, LLMs complete text from left to right. That alone is a killer feature. But for us meatboxes with less compute power, pipe syntax allow (much better) code completion. Pipe syntax is delightful to work with and makes going back to SQL a real bummer moment (please insert meme of Kate Perry kissing the earth here).
- ergest 1y agoThere’s an extension for that https://github.com/ywelsch/duckdb-psql https://github.com/ywelsch/duckdb-psql
- Philpax 1y agoAlso https://github.com/ywelsch/duckdb-prql https://github.com/ywelsch/duckdb-prql (by the same author!)
- gervwyk 1y agoNothing comes close to the power of mongodb aggression pipelines.. when used in production apps it reduces the amount of code significantly for us by doing data modeling as close as possible to the source
- sterlinm 1y ago[grizzled kdb+ user considers starting an argument but then thinks better of it]
- hantusk 1y agoCTEs go a long way towards left to right readability while keeping everything standard SQL.
- gitroom 1y agohonestly this kind of instant feedback wouldve saved me tons of headaches in the past - you think all these layers of tooling are making sql beginners pick it up faster or just overwhelming them?
- arrty88 1y agoit looks cool, but i wish i could just see the entire table that im about to query. i always start my queries with a quick `select * from table limit 10;` then go about adding the columns and joins
- matsonj 1y ago`from my_table` will do the same! We are working on how to make it easy to switch from instant sql -> run query -> instant sql
- acdanger 1y agoDoes DuckDB UI support spatial visualizations ? Would be great to be able to use the UI with the spatial extensions.
- 1egg0myegg0 1y agoWe support spatial calculations in the UI, but not spatial visualizations just yet. Thanks for the feedback!
- acdanger 1y agoJust emphasizing that the ability to display a map with geo data on it would be a killer feature for me and for many others I work with! Hope it lands on the roadmap.
- r3tr0 1y agoWe are working on something similar over at yeet. Except for system performance data. You can checkout our sandbox at https://yeet.cx/play https://yeet.cx/play
- cess11 1y agoAt times I've done crude implementations of similar functionality, by basically just taking the current string on change and concatenating with " LIMIT 20" before passing it to the database API and then rerendering a table if the result is an associative array rather than an error message. I think this would be better if it was combined with information about valid words in the cursor position, which would likely be a bit more involved but achievable through querying the schema and settling on a subset of SQL. It would help people that aren't already fluent in SQL to extract the data they want. Perhaps allow them to click the suggestions to add them to the query. I've done partial implementations of this too, that query the schema for table or column names. It's very cheap even on large, complex schemas, so it's fine to just throw every change at the database and check what drops out. In practice I didn't get much out of either beyond the fun of hacking up an ephemeral tool, or I would probably have built some small product around it.
- owlstuffing 1y agoCool tool, even cooler when paired with the manifold project for SQL[1], which has fantastic support for type-safe, native DuckDB syntax. 1. https://github.com/manifold-systems/manifold/blob/master/manifold-deps-parent/manifold-sql/readme.md https://github.com/manifold-systems/manifold/blob/master/man...
- biophysboy 1y agoIf there are any DuckDB engineers here, I just want you to know that your tool has been incredible for my work in bioinformatics/biotech. It has the flexibility/simplicity that biological data (messy, changing constantly) requires.
- Jgrubb 1y agoThere's something about this commercial company embracing this OSS project that I love that I very much don't love.