Ibis

What is Ibis?

Ibis is the portable Python dataframe library:

• Fast local dataframes (via DuckDB by default)
• Lazy dataframe expressions
• Interactive mode for iterative data exploration
• Compose Python dataframe and SQL code
• Use the same dataframe API for 20+ backends
• Iterate locally and deploy remotely by changing a single line of code

See the documentation on "Why Ibis?" to learn more.

Getting started

You can pip install Ibis with a backend and example data:

pip install 'ibis-framework[duckdb,examples]'

Then use Ibis:

>>> import ibis
>>> ibis.options.interactive = True
>>> t = ibis.examples.penguins.fetch()
>>> t
┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island    ┃ bill_length_mm ┃ bill_depth_mm ┃ flipper_length_mm ┃ body_mass_g ┃ sex    ┃ year  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string  │ string    │ float64        │ float64       │ int64             │ int64       │ string │ int64 │
├─────────┼───────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.1 │          18.7 │               181 │        3750 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.5 │          17.4 │               186 │        3800 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           40.3 │          18.0 │               195 │        3250 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           NULL │          NULL │              NULL │        NULL │ NULL   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           36.7 │          19.3 │               193 │        3450 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.3 │          20.6 │               190 │        3650 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           38.9 │          17.8 │               181 │        3625 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.2 │          19.6 │               195 │        4675 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           34.1 │          18.1 │               193 │        3475 │ NULL   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           42.0 │          20.2 │               190 │        4250 │ NULL   │  2007 │
│ …       │ …         │              … │             … │                 … │           … │ …      │     … │
└─────────┴───────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴────────┴───────┘
>>> g = t.group_by(["species", "island"]).agg(count=t.count()).order_by("count")
>>> g
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species   ┃ island    ┃ count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string    │ string    │ int64 │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie    │ Biscoe    │    44 │
│ Adelie    │ Torgersen │    52 │
│ Adelie    │ Dream     │    56 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream     │    68 │
│ Gentoo    │ Biscoe    │   124 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┘

Python + SQL: better together

For most backends, Ibis works by compiling its dataframe expressions into SQL:

>>> ibis.to_sql(g)
SELECT
  "t1"."species",
  "t1"."island",
  "t1"."count"
FROM (
  SELECT
    "t0"."species",
    "t0"."island",
    COUNT(*) AS "count"
  FROM "penguins" AS "t0"
  GROUP BY
    1,
    2
) AS "t1"
ORDER BY
  "t1"."count" ASC

You can mix SQL and Python code:

>>> a = t.sql("SELECT species, island, count(*) AS count FROM penguins GROUP BY 1, 2")
>>> a
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species   ┃ island    ┃ count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string    │ string    │ int64 │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie    │ Torgersen │    52 │
│ Adelie    │ Biscoe    │    44 │
│ Adelie    │ Dream     │    56 │
│ Gentoo    │ Biscoe    │   124 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream     │    68 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┘
>>> b = a.order_by("count")
>>> b
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species   ┃ island    ┃ count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string    │ string    │ int64 │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie    │ Biscoe    │    44 │
│ Adelie    │ Torgersen │    52 │
│ Adelie    │ Dream     │    56 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream     │    68 │
│ Gentoo    │ Biscoe    │   124 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┘

This allows you to combine the flexibility of Python with the scale and performance of modern SQL.

Backends

Ibis supports 20+ backends:

• Apache DataFusion
• Apache Druid
• Apache Flink
• Apache Impala
• Apache PySpark
• BigQuery
• ClickHouse
• Dask
• DuckDB
• Exasol
• MySQL
• Oracle
• pandas
• Polars
• PostgreSQL
• RisingWave
• SQL Server
• SQLite
• Snowflake
• Trino

How it works

Most Python dataframes are tightly coupled to their execution engine. And many databases only support SQL, with no Python API. Ibis solves this problem by providing a common API for data manipulation in Python, and compiling that API into the backend’s native language. This means you can learn a single API and use it across any supported backend (execution engine).

Ibis supports three types of backend:

1. SQL-generating backends
2. Expression-generating backends
3. Naïve execution backends

Portability

To use different backends, you can set the backend Ibis uses:

>>> ibis.set_backend("duckdb")
>>> ibis.set_backend("polars")
>>> ibis.set_backend("datafusion")

Typically, you'll create a connection object:

>>> con = ibis.duckdb.connect()
>>> con = ibis.polars.connect()
>>> con = ibis.datafusion.connect()

And work with tables in that backend:

>>> con.list_tables()
['penguins']
>>> t = con.table("penguins")

You can also read from common file formats like CSV or Apache Parquet:

>>> t = con.read_csv("penguins.csv")
>>> t = con.read_parquet("penguins.parquet")

This allows you to iterate locally and deploy remotely by changing a single line of code.

Community and contributing

Ibis is an open source project and welcomes contributions from anyone in the community.

• Read the contributing guide.
• We care about keeping the community welcoming for all. Check out the code of conduct.
• The Ibis project is open sourced under the Apache License.

Join our community by interacting on GitHub or chatting with us on Zulip.

For more information visit https://ibis-project.org/.