I bookmarked DuckDB some time ago intending to revisit, and when I did, I had forgotten why I bookmarked it and the website's contents unfortunately didn't help for reminding me.
If the documentation had said something like "a columnar database based on sqlite, optimized for analytics", I think that would pique the interest of many. Columnar database = column compression = fast filtering/aggregations = high performance analytics compared to pure row stores.
There are very few free columnar databases available that are production grade (or built on production grade technology), so a columnar database built on top of sqlite is big news.
Apologies, a website rework is currently in progress :)
DuckDB is indeed a free columnar database system, but it is not entirely built on top of SQLite. It exposes the same front-end and uses components of SQLite (the shell and testing infrastructure), but the execution engine/storage code is new.
If the documentation had said something like "a columnar database based on sqlite, optimized for analytics", I think that would pique the interest of many. Columnar database = column compression = fast filtering/aggregations = high performance analytics compared to pure row stores.
There are very few free columnar databases available that are production grade (or built on production grade technology), so a columnar database built on top of sqlite is big news.