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
Creators and Guests
Host
Head of open source community efforts for Postgres at Microsoft. Ex-Citus Data, Amazon, Sun Microsystems, and Brown University CS. Serves on PGCA board. Prolific Postgres conference speaker. Co-creator of POSETTE: An Event for Postgres. Loves sailing in Greece.
