Rusty Conover
Data infrastructure engineer and founder of Query.Farm. Building DuckDB extensions, scaling data platforms, and writing about what I learn along the way.
Recent Activity
View all →DuckDB work dominated the day. A fix for DELETE ... RETURNING with local storage merged into the main duckdb repository (PR #21541). More significantly, Rusty opened PR #21794 on duckdb/duckdb to expose column tags via duckdb_columns(), addressing a feature request for better column metadata discovery. The work involved multiple commits on the feature/column-tags-in-duckdb-columns branch in his fork (rustyconover/duckdb), and he also commented on the PR to discuss implementation details with the community.
SEC Filing Data Consistency Work
Rusty spent the day managing dependency updates and providing community support across the DuckDB ecosystem.
VGI Injector: A Tiny HTTPS Download-and-Execute Binary in Zig
I needed a self-contained binary that downloads a program over HTTPS and exec's it — small enough to run in a FROM scratch container with nothing else. Go and Rust couldn't get small enough. Zig could.
TIME Data Type Compatibility Across Databases
A survey of the TIME data type across 14 databases, comparing supported ranges, maximum values, and whether the special value 24:00:00 is accepted.
Telemetry for DuckDB Extensions Without the Pain
I open-sourced the telemetry client I use across Query.Farm's DuckDB extensions. It's two files, one function call, and it only collects platform and version info.
Releasing vgi-rpc: An RPC Framework Built on Apache Arrow
I built an RPC framework for Python that uses Apache Arrow IPC as the wire format and Python Protocol classes as the interface definition. No .proto files, no codegen — just type annotations.
Acronym-Aware Case Conversions in the DuckDB Inflector Extension
The Inflector extension for DuckDB now supports configurable acronyms, so case conversions preserve terms like HTML, API, and URL as fully uppercase — configured through a native DuckDB setting.
DuckDB Extension Development Workshop
DuckDB Developer Meeting #1 — Amsterdam, Netherlands
Building on Flight: Real-World Lessons from the DuckDB Airport Extension
Apache Arrow Summit 2025 — Paris, France
Query.Farm: Growing DuckDB Community Extensions
DuckDB Amsterdam Meetup #3 — Amsterdam, Netherlands
What I've Been Working On
Full activity log →I've spent the last three months deeply invested in DuckDB ecosystem stewardship, orchestrating compatibility upgrades across dozens of extensions while contributing upstream enhancements to Apache Arrow and shipping production-ready infrastructure. From February's vgi-rpc ecosystem rollout to January's performance archaeology work, I've balanced systematic infrastructure improvements with meaningful open-source contributions across multiple language implementations. Throughout this period, I've maintained a focus on fixing silent data losses, standardizing documentation, and building tools that are both technically solid and delightfully practical.
- Led DuckDB 1.5 compatibility crusade across the Query-farm extension portfolio, future-proofing 40+ extensions with standardized documentation structures and opening dozens of PRs to ensure ecosystem readiness.
- Contributed upstream enhancements to Apache Arrow across JavaScript, Swift, Rust, and Go, adding custom metadata support for RecordBatch IPC messages and public APIs for dictionary serialization.
- Shipped complete vgi-rpc ecosystem with production implementations in Python, C++, Go, and TypeScript, including unified branding, documentation infrastructure, and Apache 2.0 licensing across all repositories.