Performance & Limitations

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DuckdbEx uses the DuckDB CLI process with JSON output. This is portable and simple, but has trade-offs.

Performance

  • Query execution time is dominated by DuckDB itself.
  • JSON parsing adds overhead but is acceptable for OLAP workloads.
  • Use set-based SQL operations and the Relation API to let DuckDB optimize.

Limitations (CLI Backend)

  • No zero-copy Arrow, DataFrame, or Polars integration.
  • No native UDF registration.
  • Cursor/duplicate are lightweight wrappers and do not open new OS processes.
  • File-based databases may have external locking constraints.
  • Export to Parquet/CSV and load with Explorer, Arrow, or Pandas.
  • Use SQL INSTALL/LOAD for extensions.