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 made a couple of surgical commits to community-extensions, keeping the DuckDB ecosystem humming along. Meanwhile, behind closed doors on classified project, mysterious operations were afoot—three classified events suggest something intriguing is brewing in the shadows. A day of quiet but purposeful progress.
Rusty had a hands-on day juggling multiple fronts: he was actively supporting the DuckDB community by troubleshooting Python replacement scans on duckdb-web (issue #6590) and helping iron out build configuration quirks in community-extensions (issue #1512 and PR #1513). Behind the scenes, classified operations on classified project, classified project, and classified project kept things interesting. The day saw solid momentum across rustyconover/community-extensions and adbc_scanner, with 9 commits spread strategically across the Query-farm ecosystem—a mix of community stewardship, infrastructure fixes, and undisclosed tinkering.
Rusty was a busy bee across the DuckDB ecosystem and beyond, dropping 24 commits across 8 repositories. On the DuckDB front, he opened three issues—tackling Python replacement scans with plain objects (issue #6590 on duckdb-web), COMPRESS option support via duckdb.connect() (issue #21342 on duckdb), and in-memory database checkpointing (issue #6588 on duckdb-web)—while also jumping into a community discussion. He provided stellar open-source stewardship by replying to issue #1492 on community-extensions regarding updates to the airport extension, keeping the DuckDB community extensions ship running smoothly. Behind closed doors, classified operations on classified project, classified project, and classified project were humming along nicely. The day also saw action on Query-farm's VGI infrastructure (vgi-injector and vgi-entrypoint), an Apache Arrow JS PR, and some Fly.io tooling work—including a fresh fork of flyctl and issue #4771 on superfly/flyctl about image config substitution during deploys.
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 quarter focused on ecosystem stewardship across the DuckDB extension landscape, from future-proofing 40+ extensions for DuckDB 1.5 compatibility to shipping a complete production-ready vgi-rpc ecosystem across four languages. My work balanced high-impact infrastructure upgrades—including upstream Arrow enhancements for custom metadata and RecordBatch serialization—with thoughtful community contributions and the occasional classified project deep dive. Whether tackling core database internals, building geospatial indexing tools, or adding delightfully practical features like paw safety alerts to weather apps, I've been driven by the principle that good engineering means both systematic infrastructure work and surprising elegance.
- Led DuckDB 1.5 compatibility across the Query-farm extension portfolio with 40+ PRs standardizing documentation and future-proofing 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 production systems.
- Shipped complete vgi-rpc ecosystem with production implementations across Python, C++, Go, and TypeScript, including unified branding, documentation infrastructure, and Apache 2.0 licensing across all repositories.