Practical AI – Episode #292
Big data is dead, analytics is alive
with Till Döhmen & Adithya Krishnan from MotherDuck
We are on the other side of “big data” hype, but what is the future of analytics and how does AI fit in? Till and Adithya from MotherDuck join us to discuss why DuckDB is taking the analytics and AI world by storm. We dive into what makes DuckDB, a free, in-process SQL OLAP database management system, unique including its ability to execute lighting fast analytics queries against a variety of data sources, even on your laptop! Along the way we dig into the intersections with AI, such as text-to-sql, vector search, and AI-driven SQL query correction.
Featuring
Sponsors
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.
Timescale – Real-time analytics on Postgres, seriously fast. Over 3 million Timescale databases power loT, sensors, Al, dev tools, crypto, and finance apps — all on Postgres. Postgres, for everything.
Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.
Notes & Links
Chapters
| Chapter Number | Chapter Start Time | Chapter Title | Chapter Duration |
| 1 | 00:00 | Welcome to Practical AI | 00:34 |
| 2 | 00:35 | Sponsor: Fly.io | 03:31 |
| 3 | 04:19 | Struggling with big data | 04:28 |
| 4 | 08:47 | This is the way | 03:16 |
| 5 | 12:03 | Introducing DuckDB | 02:09 |
| 6 | 14:12 | What is in-process? | 02:46 |
| 7 | 17:03 | Sponsor: Timescale | 02:17 |
| 8 | 19:35 | Uses for DuckDB | 03:05 |
| 9 | 22:41 | Embedded environments & the edge | 01:15 |
| 10 | 23:55 | Standardizing fast interfaces | 04:41 |
| 11 | 28:36 | Vector search | 02:08 |
| 12 | 30:55 | Sponsor: Notion | 02:03 |
| 13 | 33:05 | Bringing MotherDuck to the cloud | 02:57 |
| 14 | 36:02 | Problems solved | 02:57 |
| 15 | 38:59 | Cloud & local compatibility | 01:42 |
| 16 | 40:42 | What makes it appealing? | 03:02 |
| 17 | 43:43 | New cool things | 04:59 |
| 18 | 48:42 | Thanks for joining us! | 00:50 |
| 19 | 49:32 | Outro | 00:46 |