DuckDB - Time to take a look

I’ve been keeping an eye on DuckDB for a while now. DuckDB reached the notional 1.0.0 version in the middle of 2024 and with continued refinement it delivers a fantastic toolset and performance for working with ’larger’ data locally at speed.

I’m interested to see what performance can be archived and the flexibility afforded in handling ’large’ datasets locally.

Looking round for a suitable dataset I came across the UK MOT Data available through OpenGOV this dataset provides historical MOT data for all vehicles in the UK stretching back years. Not only pass/fail the dataset details the specific reasons for failure.

The data is located on the government Open Data website at Anonymised MOT tests and results. This data stretches back nearly 20 years and covers the overall test results for each vehicle and for those that fail full details are provided on the failure points.

Check the next article in the project for extracting and checking the test result data.