Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano

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

What do chess clocks, jazz, and Postgres replication have in common? In Episode 32 of Talking Postgres, solution architect Boriss Mejías shares how the idea of “interconnectedness”—inspired by Douglas Adams—can help you untangle complex Postgres questions. We explore OpenAI’s approach to scaling Postgres, how Postgres active-active mirrors Sparta’s dual kingship, and how a holistic approach can reveal the behavior of synchronous replication. Also: Beethoven’s 17 drafts, and why chasing perfection can hold you back. Listen to learn more about Boriss, Postgres, and the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.

Links mentioned in this episode:
Podcast Ep32 of Talking Postgres: What went wrong (& what went right) with AIO with Andres Freund
Podcast Ep03 of Talking Postgres: Why give talks at Postgres conferences with Álvaro Herrera & Boriss Mejías:  
Wikipedia: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams
Talk at PGConf NYC 2025: Scaling Postgres to the Next Level at OpenAI, by Bohan Zhang
Video of PGConf.dev 2025 talk: Scaling Postgres to the Next Level at OpenAI, by Bohan Zhang
Talk at PGConf NYC 2025: Improved Freezing in Postgres Vacuum: From Idea to Commit, by Melanie Plageman
Talk at PGConf NYC 2025: Database Modeling to Study the New York Jazz Scene, by Boriss Mejías
Jazz Club in NYC: Patrick’s Place in Harlem
Video of PGConf EU 2024 talk: Sparta’s Dual-Kingship and PostgreSQL Active-Active, by Boriss Mejías 
Video of POSETTE 2025 talk: Postgres Storytelling: Cunning Schema Design with Creative Data Modeling, by Boriss Mejías & Sarah Conway 
Talk at FOSDEM PGDay 2024: High Availability Configurations Are Very Common for PostgreSQL, But How Do You Investigate Performance Problems When the Standby Can’t Keep Up? by Boriss Mejías and Derk van Veen
Conference: PGDay Lowlands 2025, the second year of this “second-best Postgres conference in Europe” 
Conference Schedule: upcoming PGConf EU 2025 in Latvia
Wikipedia: Chess clock
Book: Daily Rituals, by Mason Currey
Article: It Takes Two to Think, by Itai Yanai & Martin J. Lercher
Poem: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Coleridge
Wikipedia: City of Bruges Belgium, a good place for beer and cheese
Cal invite: LIVE recording of Ep33 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Nov 5, 2025

Six years, a prototype, and a brief multi-layered descent into “wronger and wronger” design—what does it take to land a major architectural change in Postgres? In Episode 31 of Talking Postgres, Andres Freund—major contributor, Postgres committer, and lead of the Asynchronous I/O project—shares the wins, the missteps, and why he thinks AIO definitely took too long. We dig into io_uring in Linux, direct I/O, streaming reads, technical leadership, and exactly when is the right time to stop working on a prototype. If you’ve ever wondered how big architectural changes happen, or why they sometimes take years, this episode is for you.
 
Links mentioned in this episode:
Talking Postgres podcast: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with Andres Freund & Heikki Linnakangas
Release Notes: PostgreSQL 18 release notes 
News: PostgreSQL RC 1 Released on Sep 04 2025
Wikipedia page: io_uring
PostgreSQL: Join the PostgreSQL Hacking Discord
Video of talk: What went wrong with AIO by Andres Freund at PGConfdev 2025
Commit: Add core asynchronous I/O infrastructure to PostgreSQL
Wiki page: AIO project in PostgreSQL with state, sub-projects, and work still to be done
Upcoming Talk: AIO in PG 18 and Beyond at PGConf NYC on 30 Sep 2025
Upcoming Talk: AIO in PG 18 and Beyond at PGConf EU on 23 Oct 2025
Wikipedia page: XZ Utils backdoor discovery by Andres Freund
Cal invite: LIVE recording of Ep32 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Oct 8, 2025