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 focused on feature parity across the vgi-rpc language implementations today, rolling out HTTP cookie support for unary RPC methods. This involved coordinated work across three repositories.
Rusty spent the day working across multiple codebases, with primary focus on the Apache Arrow project. He made 6 commits to apache/arrow, contributing to ongoing development efforts on that codebase.
Rusty focused on feature parity across the vgi-rpc language implementations, adding cancel() support for streaming RPC calls to all three client libraries.
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, orchestrating compatibility upgrades across dozens of extensions while contributing upstream enhancements to Apache Arrow and building production-ready infrastructure. February's focus on future-proofing the Query-farm portfolio and rolling out the vgi-rpc ecosystem showcased how systematic infrastructure work can be both elegant and impactful. A healthy blend of classified operations kept things mysterious while open-source gardening—from dependency bumps to core database improvements—kept the community moving forward.
• Led a DuckDB 1.5 compatibility push across 40+ extensions while standardizing documentation structures, ensuring the entire portfolio stayed current and maintainable.
• Contributed upstream Arrow enhancements across four language implementations, adding custom metadata support for RecordBatch IPC messages that fixed silent data drops in production systems.
• Shipped a complete vgi-rpc ecosystem with production implementations in Python, C++, Go, and TypeScript, including unified branding, documentation sites, and Apache 2.0 licensing.