Using DuckDB Effectively

So far, we’ve seen how DuckDB can load, transform, and analyze data from a variety of sources. DuckDB is not only a flexible and extendable database, but it has also been developed with great regard for usability.

The authors and maintainers of the DuckDB project have leveraged significant learnings from mature data management systems and have addressed some of the “paper cuts” and annoyances you may have experienced while using other database systems.

In this chapter, you will learn about time-saving shortcuts that you can use when querying and adding data to a DuckDB database. You will also gain experience with some novel approaches to joining tables – with exercises that involve using positional and temporal joins.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

• Selecting columns effectively
• Applying function chaining
• Using INSERT effectively
• Leveraging positional joins and...