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 shipped a release for vgi-rpc-python, marking another milestone for the RPC toolkit. While the day saw zero commits and no PRs merged, the release event itself represents the culmination of prior work—sometimes the best days are about crossing the finish line rather than grinding new code.
Rusty spent the day juggling a multi-language RPC symphony, spreading commits across vgi-rpc-python, vgi-rpc-typescript, and vgi-rpc-go like a seasoned conductor keeping all three orchestras in sync. Behind closed doors, classified project, classified project, and classified project received classified attention as well. On the open-source stewardship front, he fielded community support on rapidfuzz (issue #4) and troubleshot a thorny data corruption bug over on adbc_scanner (issue #5). He also opened a PR on the DuckDB community extensions, cracked open a fresh repo with arrow-js, and contributed to the Apache Arrow JavaScript ecosystem—all while maintaining the kind of distributed momentum that makes polyglot development look effortless.
Rusty was in full polyglot mode today, juggling commits across the entire vgi-rpc ecosystem—TypeScript, Go, and Python all got attention with multiple pushes each. Behind the scenes, classified project was receiving heavy classified operations (12 events worth of intrigue), while classified project and classified project got their own doses of undisclosed work. On the open-source front, Rusty opened issue #388 on apache/arrow-js flagging a silent schema mismatch bug in RecordBatchStreamWriter, then pivoted to community stewardship by fielding multiple replies on issue #5 in adbc_scanner (troubleshooting float corruption and WHERE filter quirks). Two new PRs landed in the duckdb/community-extensions realm, plus a release shipped on vgi-rpc-python. Even rapidfuzz got some love with a PR review reply. It was the kind of day where Rusty's fingers were everywhere—infrastructure, debugging, and keeping the community humming.
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
DuckDB, Apache Arrow, & the Future of Data Engineering
The Hedgineer Podcast (S2E3)
What I've Been Working On
Full activity log →I've been deep in DuckDB ecosystem stewardship over the past few months, upgrading extensions for forward compatibility, contributing upstream enhancements to Apache Arrow across multiple languages, and shipping production-ready infrastructure projects. February marked the peak of this work—I led a compatibility crusade across 40+ extensions for DuckDB 1.5, rolled out the complete vgi-rpc ecosystem with implementations in four languages, and transformed a weather app into a delightfully practical multi-mode companion. The earlier months built toward this by establishing the foundations: core DuckDB improvements in January, dependency modernization across the extension landscape in December, and methodically expanding the ecosystem with new extensions and WASM support through fall and November.
- Led DuckDB 1.5 compatibility work across 40+ extensions while standardizing documentation structures across 29 repositories and shipping a production-ready vgi-rpc ecosystem with unified branding and multi-language implementations.
- Contributed upstream enhancements to Apache Arrow across JavaScript, Swift, Rust, and Go, adding custom metadata support for RecordBatch IPC messages and fixing silent data loss issues in dictionary serialization.
- Expanded the DuckDB extension universe with new projects like JSONata, Inflector, Blake3, and geospatial tooling while orchestrating ecosystem-wide dependency updates and WASM compatibility improvements.