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 tackled a variety of integration and compatibility challenges across the DuckDB ecosystem today.
Rusty focused on low-level transport and worker lifecycle improvements across the vgi-rpc-typescript and vgi-rpc-python codebases, with parallel development on private infrastructure.
Rusty spent the day working across two main repositories, with significant activity in private repos as well.
Compiling Isn't Running: Functionally Testing DuckDB-WASM Extensions
A DuckDB extension that compiles for WebAssembly has only proven that it compiles. Whether it loads, and whether it actually runs, are separate questions. I built a Node harness to ask them across 124 community extensions. Here's what it found and the fixes that came out of it.
Quack and VGI: Two Approaches to Bringing RPC to DuckDB
Quack — the new client/server protocol extension for DuckDB — was announced today. It's been built since November 2025, almost exactly as long as I've been building VGI. Here's what's interesting, what's surprising, and where the two projects converge and diverge.
DuckDB ↔ Arrow Compatibility: A Status Page
A working status page for the Arrow-related issues and PRs I've filed against duckdb/duckdb — the UNION saga, schema/data disagreements in nested appenders, type fidelity through round-trips, and the bigger question of how defensive the C Data Interface should be.
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.
What I've Been Working On
Full activity log →I've been deep in infrastructure and ecosystem work these past two months, focusing on modernization and cross-language compatibility across multiple projects. February centered on DuckDB 1.5 upgrades, Apache Arrow enhancements, and shipping a complete production-ready vgi-rpc ecosystem with unified branding and documentation. January balanced classified work with solid open-source contributions, performance benchmarking tooling, and even a security vulnerability disclosure that prevented potential data leaks.
- Upgraded 40+ DuckDB extensions for 1.5 compatibility while standardizing documentation across 29 repositories, ensuring the entire Query-farm portfolio stays future-proof and maintainable.
- Enhanced Apache Arrow across four language implementations (JavaScript, Swift, Rust, Go) with custom metadata support for RecordBatch IPC messages, fixing silent data drops that likely affected production systems.
- Delivered Fair Weather Friend, a weather application with PWA support, astronomical mode, cycling-specific scoring, and practical features like dog-walking safety alerts.