Columnar

Columnar is a data-infrastructure company advancing open standards for database connectivity. It builds and maintains tooling around ADBC (Apache Arrow Database Connectivity), including dbc — a cross-platform command-line package manager that installs and manages ADBC drivers across macOS, Linux, and Windows and eight programming languages — and databow, a command-line SQL query tool over ADBC. Columnar also ships the DuckDB ADBC community extension and publishes Agent Skills so AI agents can connect to and query databases through ADBC. The company was surfaced as a portfolio company of Bessemer Venture Partners and is built on the Apache Arrow open-source ecosystem.

Columnar is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Data, ADBC, Apache Arrow, and Database Connectivity.

Columnar’s developer surface includes documentation, getting-started guide, engineering blog, support, CLI, changelog, and 10 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

15.1/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 4/100 human only Front door AI 3/6 light library Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-10-17 · rubric v0.24.0

0 APIs

Company DataADBCApache Arrow Database Connectivity Drivers CLI DuckDB Open Source Agent Skills

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-10-17 · rubric v0.24.0

Composite quality — 15.1/100 · emerging

Contract Quality 0.0 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 7.3 / 17

Access Clarity 0.0 / 17

Operational Transparency 2.0 / 11

Contract Governance 0.0 / 10

Discoverability 4.7 / 9

Regulatory Posture 0.9 / 15

Agent readiness — 4/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 5 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/columnar: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Standards implemented 2

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

Agent Skills

tagged — the provider's own APIs.json carries the standard as a tag; implementation not verified

Apache Arrow

tagged — the provider's own APIs.json carries the standard as a tag; implementation not verified

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Columnar Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 2

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgentSkill

AgentSkill

LLMsTxt

LLMsTxt

Build 3

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

CLI

CLI

Packages

Packages

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Support

Support

ChangeLog

ChangeLog

Company 5

The organization behind the API

BlogRSS

BlogRSS

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

LinkedIn

Bluesky

Bluesky

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Source (apis.yml)

aid: columnar
deliveryModel:
  model: library
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Library · distributed through package registries, no callable service
  confidence: low
  source:
  - none
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/columnar.png
name: Columnar
description: Columnar is a data-infrastructure company advancing open standards for database connectivity. It builds and maintains
  tooling around ADBC (Apache Arrow Database Connectivity), including dbc — a cross-platform command-line package manager
  that installs and manages ADBC drivers across macOS, Linux, and Windows and eight programming languages — and databow, a
  command-line SQL query tool over ADBC. Columnar also ships the DuckDB ADBC community extension and publishes Agent Skills
  so AI agents can connect to and query databases through ADBC. The company was surfaced as a portfolio company of Bessemer
  Venture Partners and is built on the Apache Arrow open-source ecosystem.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/columnar/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- bessemer-venture-partners
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-10-06'
tags:
- Company
- Data
- ADBC
- Apache Arrow
- Database Connectivity
- Drivers
- CLI
- DuckDB
- Open Source
- Agent Skills
tags_raw:
- Company
- Data
- ADBC
- Apache Arrow
- Database Connectivity
- Drivers
- CLI
- DuckDB
- Open Source
- Agent Skills
- Open-Source
apis: []
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
common:
- url: https://columnar.tech/blog/rss.xml
  type: BlogRSS
- type: Website
  url: https://columnar.tech/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://docs.columnar.tech/
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://docs.columnar.tech/dbc/getting_started/installation/
- type: Blog
  url: https://columnar.tech/blog/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/columnar-tech
- type: Support
  url: https://columnar.tech/interested/
- type: AgentSkill
  name: Columnar ADBC / dbc / databow Agent Skills
  url: skills/_index.yml
- type: CLI
  name: dbc and databow CLIs
  url: cli/columnar-cli.yml
- type: Packages
  url: packages/columnar-packages.yml
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/columnar-llms.txt
- type: ChangeLog
  url: changelog/columnar-changelog.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/columnar-domain-security.yml
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/columnar-tech/
- type: X
  url: https://x.com/columnar_tech
- type: Bluesky
  url: https://bsky.app/profile/columnar.tech
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-19'
  status: backfilled
  pass: local-v1
  note: backfilled from .gitignore signal + verified work evidence

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