Aggregates in PGX: An Adventure
Channel: Postgres Conference
Date: 07/06/2023

PostgreSQL provides a lot of functionality to create custom aggregates, a design feature that’s essential to the success of TimescaleDB. Our users often find themselves wanting to extend and build upon the aggregate functions we provide.

However, the prospect of creating a performant aggregate function in C, along with the potential of being the long-term maintainer of a new function, can be a high barrier for many would-be contributors.

But there’s great news! Not only does PGX help with creating, testing, and deploying aggregates using Rust, it’s easy enough for me to fit the adventure of addressing one GitHub user’s call for help into 45 minutes.

James Blackwood-Sewell is currently a Senior Developer Advocate at TimescaleDB in Sydney. Before that, he meandered through the PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, and Prometheus landscapes as the Chief Architect at Jirotech. You can follow him @jamessewell on Twitter and james-blackwood-sewell on LinkedIn.