CedarDB

Parquet as our 'Ski Lift' to Migrate from ClickHouse to CedarDB CedarDB is a database system that delivers unmatched performance for transactions and analytics, from small writes to handling billions of rows. Built on cutting-edge research to power today’s tools a...

When you’re over the tips of your skis in analytics, simple tools don’t cut it.

We used Parquet to carry Stack Overflow data from ClickHouse to CedarDB.

Result: CedarDB ran our complex queries more than 4X faster.

Read the full ski-themed benchmark ⛷️ cedardb.com/blog/ski_par...

Efficient String Compression for Modern Database Systems CedarDB is a database system that delivers unmatched performance for transactions and analytics, from small writes to handling billions of rows. Built on cutting-edge research to power today’s tools a...

Strings are everywhere; and often the most filtered columns in analytics.
So compression isn't just about saving space, it's also about query speed.
CedarDB now uses FSST to reduce string storage while keeping queries fast with the help of a dictionary.
🔗 cedardb.com/blog/string_...

Stop Nesting Database Systems CedarDB is a database system that delivers unmatched performance for transactions and analytics, from small writes to handling billions of rows. Built on cutting-edge research to power today’s tools a...

Stop nesting database systems just to paper over analytics pain. pg_duckdb and pg_clickhouse look tidy, but they rarely fix the real bottlenecks.

We explain why, and what we had to build to get HTAP right end‑to‑end in our latest blog post: cedardb.com/blog/unnest_...

CedarDB Takes to the Slopes! CedarDB is a database system that delivers unmatched performance for transactions and analytics, from small writes to handling billions of rows. Built on cutting-edge research to power today’s tools a...

As we prepare for AWS Re:Invent, we wrote about a recent PoC in "CedarDB Tames the Slopes." The steady line on the graph might evoke images of the long, straight drive to Vegas on I-15. Enjoy our post and looking forward to seeing you in Vegas next week!

cedardb.com/blog/takes_t...

Down with template (or not)! CedarDB is a database system that delivers unmatched performance for transactions and analytics, from small writes to handling billions of rows. Built on cutting-edge research to power today’s tools a...

🎃 Ready for some code chills for Halloween? 👻 In “Down with template (or not)!”, we venture into the dark world of C++ templates. 😱 Prepare for some template madness!
cedardb.com/blog/down_wi...

What if a database could be your game engine?

During parental leave @lukasvogel.bsky.social
built DOOMQL: A multiplayer DOOM-like where everything (rendering, game loop, state) runs in pure SQL on CedarDB.
It's fast, ridiculous, and surprisingly elegant.

Full write-up: cedardb.com/blog/doomql

CockroachDB and CedarDB: Better Together CedarDB is a database system that delivers unmatched performance for transactions and analytics, from small writes to handling billions of rows. Built on cutting-edge research to power today’s tools a...

Ever wished your analytics could keep up with reality instead of lagging behind?

We wrote about connecting #CockroachDB change data capture (CDC) with #CedarDB, and what that means for running lightning-fast analytical queries on live data.

cedardb.com/blog/crdb_cd...

What It Takes to Get a Research Project Ready for Production CedarDB is a database system that delivers unmatched performance for transactions and analytics, from small writes to handling billions of rows. Built on cutting-edge research to power today’s tools a...

Leaving academia is always a big step, especially if you bring your research project with you into the real world.

Read our latest post to learn what we did to prepare a research project for production workloads and what we learned along the way: cedardb.com/blog/researc...

Congratulations to SortMergeJoins from TU Munich - winners of the 2025 SIGMOD Programming Contest! Built by the Umbra research group (CedarDB’s roots), their system ran 12× faster than median - entirely open-source and no sort-merge-joins to be found 😉: github.com/umbra-db/con...

Use CedarDB to search the CedarDB docs and blogs CedarDB is a database system that delivers unmatched performance for transactions and analytics, from small writes to handling billions of rows. Built on cutting-edge research to power today’s tools a...

Join us on an AI and vector-powered journey, as we explore key philosophical topics such as "Does pickled watermelon belong on a taco?", and how to search CedarDB docs using CedarDB's vector support.

cedardb.com/blog/semanti...

Announcing the CedarDB Community Edition CedarDB is a database system that delivers unmatched performance for transactions and analytics, from small writes to handling billions of rows. Built on cutting-edge research to power today’s tools a...

CedarDB Community Edition is here!

Download CedarDB Community Edition today - no paywall, no signup, just pure performance.

Read more about our CedarDB on our blog: cedardb.com/blog/launch/

What It Takes to Be PostgreSQL Compatible Many systems and tools, including CedarDB, claim to be “PostgreSQL compatible”, but what does that actually mean? In this article, we explain why PostgresSQL compatibility has several layers, what is ...

Many database systems claim to be compatible with PostgreSQL. But what does that really mean?

Find out in our latest blog post and learn more about what it takes to become PostgreSQL compatible.

cedardb.com/blog/postgre...

Fast Compilation or Fast Execution: Just Have Both! Learn the basics of code generation, which is one of the secrets behind CedarDB's performance. CedarDB creates custom machine code for every query. This keeps data in CPU registers as long as possib...

You don’t need an army of C++ devs to hand-optimize every query. We let the code write the code.
Read our latest blog post to see how we mix runtime flexibility with almost magical performance!

cedardb.com/blog/compila...

To B or not to B: B-Trees with Optimistic Lock Coupling B-Trees stand the test of time. In this article, we explore why we still use a 55 year old data structure: It is still super efficient on modern hardware when we use contention free optimistic lock co...

B-trees may be decades old, but we still use them extensively in CedarDB.

Read our latest blog post to learn how to scale B-tree operations to hundreds of cores.

cedardb.com/blog/optimis...

Why Trees Without Branches Grow Faster: The Case for Reducing Branches in Code In some of our blog posts, we explained what steps we take to reduce the number of branching instructions in our critical paths. However, we only ever claimed that this is much better and faster, and ...

We follow up on our past claims that fewer code branches are better in our return to blogging after our winter break.

Read on to find out why branches are a burden on the CPU, and what both you and the CPU can do to avoid performance penalties.

cedardb.com/blog/reducin...

Helping Christmas Elves Count Presents (or: Vectorized Overflow Checking) In a previous post, we explained the importance of overflow checks when summing numbers, and mentioned that the usual approaches are not easily vectorized. Read here how to get 4x the performance when...

"Helping Christmas Elves Count Presents" 🎁🎅 is the title of our last blog post of the year.

Read how to implement vectorized overflow checking here: cedardb.com/blog/vectori...

The History of the Decline and Fall of In-Memory Database Systems A decade ago, there was a sudden surge of high-performance in-memory systems dominating the world of interactive analytics. Today, almost everyone has gone back to using persistent storage. Does this ...

In-memory database systems were a game changer when they first came out in the early 2010s. But it looks like everyone moved back to persistent storage.

We explore the history of in-memory database systems, studying their mistakes and celebrating their achievements.

cedardb.com/blog/in_memo...

Offset Considered Harmful or: The Surprising Complexity of Pagination in SQL Have you ever wondered why you sometimes see duplicate results when clicking on the second page of a website? In this blog post, we explore techniques for result pagination, how they impact the work n...

Have you ever wondered why you see the last entry again when switching to the second page of a website? 👬 📖

The culprit is "offset"! Read why in our blog post and find out what to use instead. 🌲

cedardb.com/blog/paginat...