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 →Rusty added a health endpoint to vgi-rpc-python, extending the RPC service with a new monitoring capability. This addition supports better operational observability for deployments relying on the library.
Rusty had a busy day maintaining and updating the DuckDB ecosystem, with particular focus on the community extensions and addressing build issues in the core DuckDB library.
Rusty spent the day working on query optimization and join semantics in the DuckDB codebase. Over 23 commits, he refined critical logic in the join execution path.
GeoSilo vs GeoArrow + Byte Stream Split: Two Approaches to Geometry Compression
A detailed comparison of GeoSilo's delta-integer encoding against GeoArrow's columnar float64 layout with Parquet BYTE_STREAM_SPLIT, covering compression ratios, precision tradeoffs, and when each approach wins.
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
What I've Been Working On
Full activity log →I've been deep in ecosystem stewardship across the DuckDB extension landscape and Apache Arrow, orchestrating major compatibility upgrades and shipping polished infrastructure projects. February was a masterclass in systematic improvement—from future-proofing 40+ extensions for DuckDB 1.5 to contributing upstream Arrow enhancements that fixed silent data drops. I closed out the quarter by shipping a complete vgi-rpc ecosystem with production implementations across four languages and giving weather apps delightful personality with features like paw safety alerts.
• Led a DuckDB 1.5 compatibility initiative across the Query-farm extension portfolio, opening 40+ PRs to standardize documentation and future-proof extensions like airport, shellfs, webmacro, and inflector.
• Contributed upstream Arrow enhancements across JavaScript, Swift, Rust, and Go implementations, adding custom metadata support for RecordBatch IPC messages and fixing silent data drops in dictionary serialization.
• Shipped a complete vgi-rpc ecosystem with production-ready implementations in Python, C++, Go, and TypeScript, including unified branding, documentation sites, and standardized licensing across all repositories.