Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano

Why does SQL feel so approachable to some developers, and why do some of them end up spending their careers in the data layer? In Episode 37 of Talking Postgres, Charles Feddersen, who leads product for Postgres at Microsoft, joins Claire to talk about building Postgres services on Azure. We explore his path from classic ASP apps on Microsoft Access to distributed Postgres with Citus, the moment he installed pgAdmin and got pulled deeper into Postgres, and what it takes to build for the many different ways people rely on Postgres today—from Flexible Server and Azure HorizonDB to developer tooling—and why it’s important to support the upstream Postgres open source project.
Previously on Talking Postgres:
Ep 22: Leading engineering for Postgres on Azure with Affan Dar: https://talkingpostgres.com/episodes/leading-engineering-for-postgres-on-azure-with-affan-dar
Ep29: How I got started leading database teams with Shireesh Thota https://talkingpostgres.com/episodes/how-i-got-started-leading-database-teams-with-shireesh-thota
Links mentioned in this episode:
Video of CMUDB talk: HorizonDB: Co‑Designing PostgreSQL and Azure for Cloud‑Native OLTP, by Adam Prout
Video of talk: Azure HorizonDB: Deep Dive into a New Enterprise-Scale PostgreSQL, by Adam Prout & Denzil Ribeiro
Talk at SCALE 23x: Did VS Code Quietly Become a Go-To Postgres Tool?, by Phil Vacca 
Visual Studio Code Marketplace: VS Code extension for PostgreSQL
Docs: Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server
GitHub repo: Citus open source
Postgres extension: PostGIS
Conference: PGConf India 2026
Upcoming conferences & talks mentioned:
Conference: PGConf.dev 2026 in Vancouver Canada
Conference: Microsoft Build 2026
Keynote at POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026: Driving Postgres forward at Microsoft
POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026: Schedule
Conference: Postgres Summit US 2026 (formerly PGConf NYC)
Conference: PGConf EU 2026 in Valencia
Calendar invite: LIVE recording of Ep38 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Apr 08, 2026

Why would anyone willingly spend weeks chasing a slow query, knowing they might hit dead ends along the way? In Episode 36 of Talking Postgres, Tomas Vondra—Postgres committer and long‑time performance contributor—joins Claire to explain why hacking on Postgres performance is not just hard, but also fun. We dig into the process of investigating why queries are slow, how iteration and “wrong turns” are part of performance work, and why Tomas prefers meaningful performance puzzles over toy problems. Along the way, we talk about using benchmarks to build an understanding of a problem. Tomas also shares how even small changes in code can have outsized impact when that code is used a lot, and how the mathematics embedded in the Postgres query planner/executor makes the work especially rewarding.
Previously on Talking Postgres:
Talking Postgres Ep31: What went wrong (& what went right) with AIO with Andres Freund
Talking Postgres Ep24: Why mentor Postgres developers with Robert Haas
Links mentioned in this episode:
PGConf.dev 2026: Schedule
GitHub repo: PostgreSQL Monthly Hacking Workshop, organized by Robert Haas 
Nordic PGDay 2026: Tomas talk on approximating percentiles
Video of POSETTE 2025 talk: Performance Archaeology – 20 years of improvements
Video of PGConf EU 2025 talk: Fast-path locking improvements in PG18
Conference: Prague PostgreSQL Developer Day
Discord: PostgreSQL Hacking Discord
GitHub repo: tvondra/tdigest
Brendan Gregg’s site: perf Linux profiler examples
Docs: pgbench for running benchmarks on PostgreSQL
Blog: Tomas Vondra blog
Postgres Patch Ideas: List on Tomas Vondra blog
Calendar invite: LIVE recording of Ep37 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Mar 18, 2026

Are self-driving databases the Waymos of the future? In Episode 35 of Talking Postgres, Luigi Nardi—founder and CEO of DBtune and Stanford researcher—joins Claire Giordano to explore his journey from academic research to Level 5 autonomous database tuning. We dig into Luigi’s early days with a Commodore 64, how he began his PhD in Paris before he had learned to speak French, and how "professor privilege" in Sweden helped him bootstrap his startup. You’ll learn why the DBtune team chose database tuning and Postgres as their focus, what the Jevons paradox means for the future of developers, and how the “Level 5” vision fuels the DBtune team’s work toward a truly self-driving system.
 
Previously on Talking Postgres:
Talking Postgres Ep30: AI for data engineers with Simon Willison
Talking Postgres Ep23: How I got started as a developer & in Postgres with Daniel Gustafsson
Links mentioned in this episode:
CFP: POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026’s CFP closes on Sun Feb 1, 2026 @ 11:59pm PST
Video of POSETTE 2024 talk: Autotuning PostgreSQL on Azure Flexible Server, by Luigi Nardi
Video of PGConf India 2025 talk: ML for Systems and Systems for ML, by Luigi Nardi
PGConf India 2025: Round Table Discussion about AI
Oxide and Friends podcast: Engineering Rigor in the LLM Age
Wikipedia: Jevons paradox
Wikipedia: Neuro-symbolic AI
Conference: PGDay Lowlands (Boriss Mejías calls it the second-best Postgres conference in Europe)
Calendar invite: LIVE recording of Ep36 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Feb 18, 2026

What do conference planning, hacking weddings, and cat-free coding sessions have to do with Postgres? In Episode 34 of Talking Postgres, Melanie Plageman—Postgres committer and major contributor from Microsoft—joins Claire for a lively deep dive into what developers can expect at PGConf.dev 2026 as Postgres turns 30. We explore new content formats, the role of travel grants, why Tuesday becomes a full conference day, and how the hallway track often shapes the next Postgres release. Plus: creating space for new contributors to get inspired and get involved. And yes—the CFP is open until Jan 16, 2026.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Podcast: Becoming a Postgres committer with Melanie Plageman
Podcast: How I got started as a dev and in Postgres with Melanie Plageman & Thomas Munro
Conference: PGConf.dev 2026
CFP for PGConf.dev: CFP will close on Jan 16, 2026
PGConf.dev 2026: About
PGConf.dev 2026: Sponsorship levels
PGConf.dev 2026: Travel grant program
Social: LinkedIn account for PGConf.dev
POSETTE: An Event for Postgres: POSETTE CFP is open until Feb 1, 2026
Meetup: Post about inaugural PostgreSQL Nairobi Meetup in Dec 2025 
PGDay Lowlands 2025: Debate on Kubernetes, session details
PGDay Lowlands 2025: Debate about autotuning, session details
Conference talk at PGCon 2019: Intro to Postgres Planner Hacking, by Melanie Plageman
Blog post: The Pac-Man Rule at Conferences, by Eric Holsher
Discord invite for PostgreSQL Hacking Mentoring server: https://discord.gg/bx2G9KWyrY
Cal invite: LIVE recording of Ep35 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Jan 14, 2026

What do guitar busking, geospatial queries, and agentic coding have to do with Postgres? In Episode 33 of Talking Postgres, principal engineer Rob Emanuele at Microsoft shares his winding path from Venice Beach to building a new VS Code extension for PostgreSQL—that works with any Postgres, anywhere. We dig into GitHub Copilot, ask vs. agent mode, and how Rob now codes in English—and then spends even more time in code review to decide what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s dangerous. Also: how PyCon changed his life; his work on the Microsoft Planetary Computer with spatio-temporal queries and PostGIS; and how music, improv, and failure shape his approach to developer experience. 

Links mentioned in this episode:
Visual Studio Marketplace: VS Code extension for PostgreSQL with ~261K downloads to date
GitHub repo: VS Code extension for PostgreSQL (for issues/discussions)
Docs: GitHub Copilot agent mode
POSETTE 2025 Talk: Introducing Microsoft’s VS Code Extension for PostgreSQL, by Matt McFarland
VS Code Live: Working with PostgreSQL databases with the Microsoft PostgreSQL VS Code extension, with Olivia Guzzardo & Rob Emanuele
Talking Postgres Ep30: AI for data engineers with Simon Willison
Postgres Meetup for All: VS Code Tools for Postgres, happening on Thu Dec 11, 2025 
Wikipedia: Dogfooding
Talking Postgres Ep07: Why people care about PostGIS and Postgres with Paul Ramsey & Regina Obe
POSETTE 2024 keynote: The Open Source Geospatial Community, PostGIS, & Postgres, by Regina Obe
Website: Microsoft Planetary Computer
GitHub repo: PgSTAC
Cal invite: LIVE recording of Ep34 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Dec 10, 2025