Columnar

Columnar is a small, engineering-focused publisher that concentrates on the narrow but critical niche of database connectivity infrastructure. Its single public offering, dbc, is a lightweight command-line utility designed to automate the discovery, installation, and lifecycle management of ADBC (Arrow Database Connectivity) drivers across Windows workstations and servers. Typical users are data engineers, analytics developers, and DevOps teams who need repeatable, scriptable control over the exact driver versions that bridge Python, R, or other Arrow-aware applications to SQL engines, cloud warehouses, or local data files. By treating drivers as versioned packages, dbc eliminates the manual hunting for vendor DLLs, prevents “works on my machine” conflicts, and integrates cleanly into CI pipelines that spin up ephemeral analytics environments. The tool supports listing available drivers, pinning versions, switching between staging and production catalogs, and rolling back botched upgrades with one command, making it equally useful for onboarding new team laptops or replicating a validated driver stack inside Docker containers. Columnar’s minimalist approach keeps the executable footprint tiny and defers to existing Windows package managers rather than re-inventing repository infrastructure. The publisher’s software is available for free on get.nero.com, where downloads are delivered through trusted Windows package sources such as winget, always pull the latest release, and can be installed singly or in batch alongside other utilities.