MyDuck Server

MyDuck Server unlocks serious power for your MySQL analytics. Imagine the simplicity of MySQL’s familiar interface fused with the raw analytical speed of DuckDB. Now you can supercharge your MySQL queries with DuckDB’s lightning-fast OLAP engine, all while using the tools and dialect you know.

❓ Why MyDuck ❓

While MySQL is a popular go-to choice for OLTP, its performance in analytics often largely lags. DuckDB, on the other hand, is built for fast, embedded analytical processing. MyDuck Server lets you enjoy DuckDB's high-speed analytics without leaving the MySQL ecosystem.

With MyDuck Server, you can:

Accelerate MySQL analytics by running analytical queries on your MySQL data at speeds several orders of magnitude faster 🚀
Keep familiar tools—there’s no need to change your existing MySQL-based data analysis toolchains 🛠️
Go beyond MySQL syntax through DuckDB’s full power to expand your analytics potential 💥
Run DuckDB in server mode to share a DuckDB instance with your team or among your applications 🌩️
and much more! See below for a full list of feature highlights.

MyDuck Server isn’t here to replace MySQL — it’s here to help MySQL users do more with their data. This open-source project gives you a convenient way to integrate high-speed analytics into your MySQL workflow, all while embracing the flexibility and efficiency of DuckDB.

✨ Key Features

Blazing Fast OLAP with DuckDB: MyDuck stores data in DuckDB, an OLAP-optimized database known for lightning-fast analytical queries. With DuckDB, MyDuck executes queries up to 1000x faster than traditional MySQL setups, enabling complex analytics that were impractical with MySQL alone.
MySQL-Compatible Interface: MyDuck speaks MySQL wire protocol and understands MySQL syntax, so you can connect to it with any MySQL client and run MySQL-style SQL. MyDuck translates your queries on the fly and executes them in DuckDB. Connect your favorite data visualization tools and BI platforms to MyDuck without any changes, and enjoy the speed boost.
Zero-ETL: Just START REPLICA and go! MyDuck replicates data from your primary MySQL server in real-time, so you can start querying immediately. There’s no need to set up complex ETL pipelines.
Consistent and Efficient Replication: Thanks to DuckDB's solid ACID support, we’ve carefully managed transaction boundaries in the replication stream to ensure a consistent data view — you’ll never see dirty data mid-transaction. Plus, MyDuck’s transaction batching collects updates from multiple transactions and applies them to DuckDB in batches, significantly reducing write overhead (since DuckDB isn’t designed for high-frequency OLTP writes).
Raw DuckDB Power: MyDuck also offers a Postgres-compatible port, allowing you to send DuckDB SQL directly. This opens up DuckDB’s full analytical capabilities, including friendly SQL syntax, advanced aggregates, accessing remote data sources, and more.
DuckDB in Server Mode: If you aren't interested in MySQL but just want to share a DuckDB instance with your team or among your applications, MyDuck is also a great solution. You can deploy MyDuck to a server, ignore all the MySQL configuration, and connect to it with any PostgreSQL client.
Seamless Integration with MySQL Dump & Copy Tools: MyDuck plays perfectly with modern MySQL tools, especially the MySQL Shell, the official advanced MySQL client. You can load data into MyDuck in parallel from a MySQL Shell dump, or leverage the Shell’s copy-instance utility to copy a consistent snapshot of your running MySQL server to MyDuck.
Bulk Data Loading: MyDuck supports fast bulk data loading from the client side with the standard MySQL LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE command or the PostgreSQL COPY FROM STDIN command.
Standalone Mode: MyDuck can run in standalone mode, without MySQL replication. In this mode, it is a drop-in replacement for MySQL, but with a DuckDB heart. You can CREATE TABLE, transactionally INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE data, and run blazingly fast SELECT queries.

📊 Performance

Typical OLAP queries can run up to 1000x faster with MyDuck Server compared to MySQL alone, especially on large datasets. Under the hood, it's just DuckDB doing what it does best: processing analytical queries at lightning speed. You are welcome to run your own benchmarks and prepare to be amazed! Alternatively, you can refer to well-known benchmarks like the ClickBench and H2O.ai db-benchmark to see how DuckDB performs against other databases and data science tools. Also remember that DuckDB has robust support for transactions, JOINs, and larger-than-memory query processing, which are unavailable in many competing systems and tools.

🎯 Roadmap

We have big plans for MyDuck Server! Here are some of the features we’re working on:

Be compatible with MySQL proxy tools like ProxySQL and MariaDB MaxScale.
Replicate data from PostgreSQL.
...and more! We’re always looking for ways to make MyDuck Server better. If you have a feature request, please let us know by opening an issue.

🏃‍♂️ Getting Started

Prerequisites

Docker (recommended) for setting up MyDuck Server quickly.
MySQL or PostgreSQL clients for connecting and testing your setup.

Installation

Get a standalone MyDuck Server up and running in minutes using Docker:

docker run -p 13306:3306 -p 15432:5432 apecloud/myduckserver:latest

This setup exposes:

Port 13306 for MySQL wire protocol connections.
Port 15432 for PostgreSQL wire protocol connections, allowing direct DuckDB SQL.

Usage

Connecting via MySQL

Connect using any MySQL client to run MySQL-style SQL queries:

mysql -h127.0.0.1 -P13306 -uroot

Connecting via PostgreSQL

For full analytical power, connect using the PostgreSQL-compatible port and write DuckDB SQL directly:

psql -h 127.0.0.1 -p 15432 -U mysql

Replicating Data

We have integrated a setup tool in the Docker image that helps replicate data from your primary MySQL server to MyDuck Server. The tool is available via the SETUP_MODE environment variable. In REPLICA mode, the container will start MyDuck Server, dump a snapshot of your primary MySQL server, and start replicating data in real-time.

docker run \
  --network=host \
  --privileged \
  --workdir=/home/admin \
  --env=SETUP_MODE=REPLICA \
  --env=MYSQL_HOST=<mysql_host> \
  --env=MYSQL_PORT=<mysql_port> \
  --env=MYSQL_USER=<mysql_user> \
  --env=MYSQL_PASSWORD=<mysql_password> \
  --detach=true \
  apecloud/myduckserver:latest

Connecting to Cloud MySQL

MyDuck Server supports setting up replicas from common cloud-based MySQL offerings. For more information, please refer to the replica setup guide.

💡 Contributing

Let’s make MySQL analytics fast and powerful—together!

MyDuck Server is open-source, and we’d love your help to keep it growing! Check out our CONTRIBUTING.md for ways to get involved. From bug reports to feature requests, all contributions are welcome!

💗 Acknowledgements

MyDuck Server is built on top of the a collection of amazing open-source projects, notably:

DuckDB - The fast in-process analytical database that powers MyDuck Server.
go-mysql-server - The excellent MySQL server implementation in Go maintained by DoltHub that MyDuck Server is based on.
Vitess - Provides the MySQL replication stream subscriber used in MyDuck Server.
SQLGlot - The ultimate SQL transpiler.

We are grateful to the developers and contributors of these projects for their hard work and dedication to open-source software.

📝 License

MyDuck Server is released under the Apache License 2.0.

digoal/myduckserver