Connecting to Self-Hosted Databend using BendSQL

In this tutorial, we will guide you through the process of connecting to a self-hosted Databend instance using BendSQL.

1

Before You Start

• Ensure that Docker is installed on your local machine, as it will be used to launch Databend.
• Ensure that BendSQL is installed on your machine. See Installing BendSQL for instructions on how to install BendSQL using various package managers.

2

Start Databend

Run the following command in your terminal to launch a Databend instance:

docker run -d --name databend \
  -e QUERY_DEFAULT_USER=eric \
  -e QUERY_DEFAULT_PASSWORD=abc123 \
  -p 3307:3307 -p 8000:8000 -p 8124:8124 -p 8900:8900 \
  datafuselabs/databend:nightly

This command starts a Databend instance locally in a Docker container with the following connection info:

• Host: 127.0.0.1
• Port: 8000
• User: eric
• Password: abc123

3

Launch BendSQL

Once the Databend instance is running, you can connect to it using BendSQL. Open a terminal and use the following command to connect:

bendsql --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000 --user eric --password abc123

This will connect to Databend using the HTTP API at 127.0.0.1:8000 with the user eric and the password abc123. After running this command, you should see a successful connection message, like the one below:

Welcome to BendSQL 0.24.7-ff9563a(2024-12-27T03:23:17.723492000Z).
Connecting to 127.0.0.1:8000 as user eric.
Connected to Databend Query v1.2.725-nightly-25ee2d6e65(rust-1.88.0-nightly-2025-04-16T13:54:25.363718584Z)
Loaded 1432 auto complete keywords from server.
Started web server at 127.0.0.1:8080

4

Execute Queries

Once connected, you can execute SQL queries in the BendSQL shell. For instance, type SELECT NOW(); to return the current time:

eric@127.0.0.1:8000/default> SELECT NOW();

SELECT NOW()

┌────────────────────────────┐
│            now()           │
│          Timestamp         │
├────────────────────────────┤
│ 2025-04-24 13:24:06.640616 │
└────────────────────────────┘
1 row read in 0.025 sec. Processed 1 row, 1 B (40 rows/s, 40 B/s)

5

Quit BendSQL

To quit BendSQL, type quit.

eric@127.0.0.1:8000/default> quit
Bye~
➜  ~

Bendsql UI

With --ui option, BendSQL will start a web server and open a browser to show the UI interface. We can execute sql or analyze query performance with BendSQL in the browser. Also we can share the results with others by copying the url.

❯ Bendsql -h 127.0.0.1 --port 8000 --ui