This. I've recently used both duckdb and sqlite to power a dashboard for a small restaurant of a family member. It converts all their sales to a very tiny parquet files, daily.
The file fits in memory and can do all sort of computation in the browser itself. The backend is extremely simple, it just loads the JS and serves the parquet files.
It was also trivial to let the owner do their own queries, just give the schema to an LLM and let it use the charting library, no data hallucinations. If they need it in the dashboard they can either use that one or ask me to review that query.
To be honest, given how simple some things became, it's been really fun to work on.
Similar experience here. The best thing I've built in a long time is replacing a complex (and scary) permissions system built on top of Snowflake with single role duckdb databases that - aside from no longer worrying about bugs leaking data across roles - are more performant, timely and flexible. Combined with the use of AI this is the way forward IMO.
At the other end of the spectrum, working with random data on "what if?" and exploration tasks with DuckDB is fun again. it's so straightforward and fast, with tools and functions for pretty much everything.
> no data hallucinations
Dangerous thing to assert. It’ll happily run SQL that works, but doesn’t necessarily correspond to intentions or unstated assumptions about the data.
Of course I meant that it won't make data up.
It can only emit SQL and the json spec of the chart.
Since shipping I've reviewed dozens of queries and charts it produces answering the user. I'm yet to catch sonnet off guard.
I have a a theory that LLMs are going to be the death knell of big SaaS. It's so much harder to build and maintain an massive SaaS that does 80% of what 80% of your customers want, than it is to build something small and simple that does 100% of what one customer wants.
Maybe once the model can administer and operate the service too.
For now building the 10% of the SaaS that you need still leaves you operating 100% of a new service/process
neat