Building Postgres services on Azure with Charles Feddersen | Talking Postgres Ep37

Charles Feddersen discusses his career path, building Postgres services on Azure, and Microsoft's commitment to the upstream open-source project.

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. Chapters: ⏩ 00:00 Music & introduction ⏩ 01:16 Hands-on coding in Melbourne in early 2000s ⏩ 04:37 Twenty years of databases in two minutes ⏩ 09:56 I didn't have a 15-year career plan ⏩ 14:15 The day I installed pgAdmin ⏩ 18:37 I learned Postgres by writing code, not reading ⏩ 24:51 Fewer arrows with more wood behind them ⏩ 38:48 Non-negotiables for enterprise databases ⏩ 45:01 Giving back to the project you build on ⏩ 54:27 I could never go back to working without AI ⏩ 1:05:04 The magic of meeting in person 📜 Full transcript available at: talkingpostgres.com/episodes/building-postgres-services-on-a… ✅ Listen to more episodes of Talking Postgres: talkingpostgres.com 💥 Subscribe to Talking Postgres, so you never miss an episode: talkingpostgres.com/subscribe Previously on Talking Postgres: 🔹 Talking Postgres podcast Ep22 with Affan Dar: youtu.be/yLdT5E1Qjoc?si=5B89a5OFAKzDTdTH 🔹 Talking Postgres podcast Ep29 with Shireesh Thota: youtu.be/jP8a_S2MjtY?si=YRHiwVBq3JsS4Rqe More Links mentioned in this episode: 🔹 Video of CMUDB talk about HorizonDB: Co‑Designing PostgreSQL and Azure for Cloud‑Native OLTP, by Adam Prout: youtu.be/EdgeqeW47_w?si=dWo4P28FX1SY8YhL 🔹 Video on Azure HorizonDB: Deep Dive into a New Enterprise-Scale PostgreSQL, by Adam Prout & Denzil Ribeiro: youtu.be/BJxrSKAvCis?si=tu6Eu1J8B0ZOXD9z 🔹 Talk at SCALE 23x: Did VS Code Quietly Become a Go-To Postgres Tool? socallinuxexpo.org/scale/23x/presentations/did-vs-code-quiet… 🔹 Visual Studio Code extension for PostgreSQL: marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-ossdata.vscod… 🔹 Documentation for Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server: learn.microsoft.com/azure/postgresql/ 🔹 GitHub repo for Citus open source: github.com/citusdata/citus 🔹 PostGIS extension to Postgres: postgis.net/ 🔹 PGConf India 2026: live.pgconf.in/ Upcoming conferences & talks mentioned: 🔹 PGConf.dev 2026 in Vancouver Canada: 2026.pgconf.dev/ 🔹 Microsoft Build 2026: build.microsoft.com/en-US/home 🔹 Keynote at POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026: Driving Postgres forward at Microsoft: posetteconf.com/2026/