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, adding cancel() support for streaming RPC calls to all three client libraries.
Rusty spent the day advancing batched window aggregation support in duckdb/duckdb. He opened PR #22143 introducing aggregate_window_batch_t, a new callback variant that optimizes window function evaluation by pre-collecting subframes for all output rows and invoking the batch callback once, rather than looping through individual rows. This reduces function call overhead for custom aggregate window operations and demonstrates a thoughtful approach to performance in the aggregation pipeline.
Rusty added a health endpoint to vgi-rpc-python, extending the RPC service with a new monitoring capability. This addition supports better operational observability for deployments relying on the library.
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 months, orchestrating compatibility upgrades across dozens of extensions while contributing meaningful enhancements upstream to Apache Arrow. February marked the culmination of this work with a complete vgi-rpc ecosystem launch across four languages, unified branding, and production-ready infrastructure. Throughout this stretch, I've balanced large-scale ecosystem maintenance with core database improvements and some classified operations that remain tastefully mysterious.
- Led a DuckDB 1.5 compatibility push across 40+ extensions, standardizing documentation and future-proofing the entire Query-farm portfolio while maintaining production stability.
- Shipped a production-ready vgi-rpc ecosystem in Python, C++, Go, and TypeScript with Cloudflare-hosted documentation, unified branding, and Apache 2.0 licensing across the board.
- Contributed upstream enhancements to Apache Arrow across four language implementations, adding custom metadata support for RecordBatch IPC messages and fixing silent data drops in dictionary serialization.