dbq

dbq

A CLI for executing serverless SQL queries on Databricks.

dbq sql "
  SELECT stuff FROM the.lakehouse WHERE patience = 0
"

Features

• Quick.
• Simple.
• JSON, CSV, or Parquet output.
• Preserves type information; no "everything is a string" nonsense.

Installing it

On Mac, with brew:

brew install mdub/brews/dbq 

Elsewhere, with go install:

go install github.com/mdub/dbq@latest

Using it

Select a workspace:

export DBQ_WORKSPACE=my-workspace

Run a query:

dbq sql "SELECT current_timestamp(), current_user()"

View a cheatsheet:

dbq cheatsheet

How it works

dbq uses the Databricks SDK for Go:

• Configuration: No files required - just command-line flags and a couple of environment variables.
• Authentication: OAuth U2M (user-to-machine) flow. Tokens are cached and automatically refreshed.
• Results: fetched in Arrow format, minimizing serialization overhead and preserving type fidelity.