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 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.
Rusty focused on join elimination optimization in DuckDB, tackling a feature to improve query performance when joins can be safely removed based on primary key and uniqueness constraints.
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 and core database internals over the past few months, orchestrating compatibility upgrades across dozens of DuckDB extensions while contributing upstream enhancements to Apache Arrow. February culminated in shipping a production-ready vgi-rpc ecosystem with implementations across four languages, while January and December focused on dependency management, performance optimization, and meaningful bug fixes that prevent real-world issues. Throughout this period, I've balanced transparent open-source contributions with some mysteriously classified operations that kept things interesting.
- Led a DuckDB 1.5 compatibility initiative that standardized 29+ repositories, opening 40+ PRs across extensions like airport, shellfs, and inflector to future-proof the entire ecosystem.
- Contributed upstream to Apache Arrow across JavaScript, Swift, Rust, and Go implementations, fixing silent data drops in RecordBatch IPC messages and adding custom metadata support.
- Shipped Fair Weather Friend with production features including PWA support, astronomical stargazing mode, and dog walking safety alerts—proving weather apps can be both delightfully practical and genuinely useful.