Amazing, we need more DBs that can be queried from the browser directly. I needed something like this a lot but I ended up using sqlite with ranges instead
Not exactly. DuckDB itself does not have native vector index support; the vector search functionality comes from extensions such as VSS, which use their own index format. Those indexes are managed by DuckDB and are not designed to be shared as standalone artifacts or queried directly from a browser.
ParqDB takes a different approach: the vector index itself is stored in Parquet format. This makes the index a portable dataset that can be published, shared through object storage, and queried directly by clients (including browsers via WASM) without a database server.
Amazing, we need more DBs that can be queried from the browser directly. I needed something like this a lot but I ended up using sqlite with ranges instead
Thanks! SQLite with ranges is a pretty neat approach too. It’s great to see more people exploring browser-native databases.
Doesn't DuckDB do this?
Not exactly. DuckDB itself does not have native vector index support; the vector search functionality comes from extensions such as VSS, which use their own index format. Those indexes are managed by DuckDB and are not designed to be shared as standalone artifacts or queried directly from a browser.
ParqDB takes a different approach: the vector index itself is stored in Parquet format. This makes the index a portable dataset that can be published, shared through object storage, and queried directly by clients (including browsers via WASM) without a database server.
More details and examples are available in our GitHub repo: https://github.com/parqdb-io/parqdb