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 →vgi-rpc multilingual rollout continues across all language implementations. Work spans the Rust, Go, TypeScript, Python, and Java libraries, with a consistent theme: adding response byte capacity constraints (max_response_bytes and max_externalized_response_bytes) to the HTTP transport layer. This mirrors an earlier pattern across the stack — Rust and Go received the caps first, followed by TypeScript. The Go and Rust implementations also include in-progress work on shared-memory transport hardening with benchmark and soak tooling.
A productive day spanning documentation improvements, OAuth infrastructure work, and DuckDB feature development.
Rusty made significant progress across the vgi-rpc language implementations, focusing on cross-language alignment and performance optimizations.
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 DuckDB ecosystem stewardship these past few months, balancing major infrastructure upgrades with meaningful open-source contributions across Apache Arrow and the broader data tools landscape. February saw me future-proof dozens of extensions for DuckDB 1.5 compatibility while shipping a complete vgi-rpc ecosystem with production implementations in four languages. Across January and December, I tackled everything from core database engine improvements to cryptographic extensions, security audits, and the kind of classified work that keeps mystery alive.
- Led a DuckDB 1.5 compatibility initiative across 40+ PRs, standardizing documentation and future-proofing extensions like airport, shellfs, webmacro, and inflector while maintaining a sprawling ecosystem of 29+ repositories.
- Contributed upstream enhancements to Apache Arrow across JavaScript, Swift, Rust, and Go, adding custom metadata support for RecordBatch messages and fixing silent data drops in dictionary serialization.
- Shipped Fair Weather Friend with PWA support, astronomical stargazing, cycling-specific scoring, and dog walking mode with paw safety alerts—turning a weather app into something genuinely delightful.