From dreaming of driving a bus to leading database engineering at Microsoft. In Episode 29 of Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano, Shireesh Thota traces his path to becoming CVP of Azure databases—rooted in a love of math, early BASIC programming, and a certainty that he’d become an engineer. We dig into the shift from engineer to manager (if only people came with documentation); why it’s so important for Microsoft to contribute to the PostgreSQL open source project—not just consume it; and whether Shireesh has a favorite database (hint: it better be Postgres.)

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Blog post excerpt: Why we have a Postgres open source contributor team at Microsoft
• Podcast episode: Leading engineering for Postgres on Azure with Affan Dar
• VS Code Marketplace: New VS Code extension for PostgreSQL
• POSETTE 2025 talk: Introducing Microsoft’s VS Code extension for Postgres by Matt McFarland
• LinkedIn post: PGConf.dev 2025 talk on “The trouble with extensions” by Marco Slot
• Podcast episode: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David Rowley
• Book: Who Moved My Cheese
• Cal invite: LIVE recording of Ep30 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Aug 6, 2025

What drives someone to publish 600+ issues of a Postgres newsletter for over a decade? In Episode 28 of Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano, Peter Cooper—creator of Postgres Weekly—shares how his days of rustic programming and QBASIC fanzines on Usenet led to a newsletter empire that now reaches nearly half a million developers each week. We dig into the BBC's "big tent" editorial influence, an accidental business model that just worked, and the perils of "temporary" hacks. Plus: spam filters, a Photoshop addiction, and one very cheesy story (dairy-free).

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Newsletter: Postgres Weekly
• Cooperpress: List of newsletters
• Newsletter: Latest issue of Postgres Weekly on Jun 19, 2025
• Newsletter: Postgres Weekly issue with horrible graphic
• Newsletter: Very first issue of Postgres Weekly on Mar 13, 2013
• Newsletter: Ruby Weekly, the first Cooperpress newsletter
• Book: Beginning Ruby Third Edition, by Peter Cooper
• Podcast episode: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David Rowley
• Feed reader: Feedbin
• GitHub repo: feedbin/feedbin
• Feed reader: Feeder
• Email testing software: Litmus
• GitHub repo: MGML markup language for email
• Paper: The Design of Postgres
• GitHub repo: PGRX for building Postgres extensions in Rust
• Podcast news: Podnews.net for daily briefings about podcasts
• Wikipedia page: BBC Micro
• Wikipedia page: ZX Spectrum
• Cal invite: LIVE recording of Ep29 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Jul 9, 2025

How does a trek to K2 base camp in the Himalayas spark the idea for a database company? In Episode 27 of Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano, guest Peter Farkas—CEO and co-founder of FerretDB—shares the origin story of this open source MongoDB alternative. (Spoiler: “Ferret” wasn’t the original name). We dig into why Postgres was the obvious choice, what “true open source” means to Peter, and how FerretDB is now powered by the open source DocumentDB extension from Microsoft. Plus, why Hungarian Trappist cheese might deserve a footnote in database history.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• GitHub: FerretDB/FerretDB repo
• Blog: FerretDB 2.0 GA: Open Source MongoDB alternative, ready for production
• ACM SIGMOD: The Design of Postgres, published 15 June 1986
• Postgres Weekly: Issue 591 featuring FerretDB
• GitHub: Microsoft/DocumentDB open source repo
• Conference talk: From MongoDB to Postgres: Building an Open Standard for Document Databases at POSETTE 2025
• OSI Blog: The SSL is Not an Open Source License
• RedMonk Blog: OSS: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back, by Stephen O’Grady
• Talking Postgres Ep18: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David Rowley
• OpenDocDB: initiative to define an open standard
• Wikipedia: K2 (yes, the mountain)
• Go Blog: The Go Gopher
• xkcd: webcomic 927 on Standards
• Wikipedia: Trappista cheese
• Cal invite: LIVE recording of Ep28 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Jun 18, 2025