KEYNOTE: Driving Postgres forward at Microsoft | POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026

Hear about Microsoft's commitment to Postgres directly from two Microsoft leaders. Affan Dar (Microsoft) and Charles Feddersen (Microsoft) share their vision in their keynote talk “Driving Postgres forward at Microsoft” at POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026. Abstract: Microsoft is deeply invested in Postgres. Both in the upstream open source project and as a premier cloud database offering. In this keynote, Charles Feddersen and Affan Dar, who lead PostgreSQL engineering at Azure, will share how Microsoft is driving Postgres forward today: not just as a database to run in the cloud, but as an open source project we’re investing in for the long run. They’ll talk about what that looks like in practice, including Microsoft’s work in the Postgres community, recent contributions into core Postgres, and how those efforts shape the Azure Database for PostgreSQL managed service. The session will also touch on database migrations, developer tools, and why we created Azure HorizonDB. This is a technical, inside look at why Postgres matters to Microsoft, what the team has been focused on recently, and how that work connects back to the broader Postgres ecosystem. Affan Dar is the VP of Engineering for PostgreSQL and MySQL at Microsoft. These teams build and operate Azure's relational open source database services and also make upstream contributions to PostgreSQL. Charles Feddersen is the Partner Director of Product Management for Postgres and MySQL on Azure, which includes the portfolio of Postgres and MySQL managed services as well as the contributions that Microsoft makes to open source Postgres. In his current role Charles is responsible for product definition and strategy, roadmap, customer experience, and overall success of Postgres and MySQL services at Microsoft. ► Video chapters: ⏩ 00:00 – Music & introduction ⏩ 00:44 – POSETTE journey and community growth ⏩ 02:14 – Four ways Microsoft is advancing Postgres ⏩ 02:46 – Open-source contributions at cloud scale ⏩ 03:54 – PostgreSQL 19: advancing the core engine ⏩ 05:38 – Azure Postgres performance and scaling features ⏩ 07:51 – Demo: cascading read replicas in action ⏩ 09:37 – Elastic clusters and horizontal scaling ⏩ 10:55 – HorizonDB architecture and cloud-native design ⏩ 13:09 – Demo: building AI pipelines inside Postgres ⏩ 15:51 – Developer tooling and VS Code integration ⏩ 18:22 – Demo: debugging queries with Copilot ⏩ 21:03 – Key takeaways and future of Postgres 📕 Everything you need to know about POSETTE: An Event for Postgres can be found at: https://posetteconf.com ✅ Learn more: watch more POSETTE talks: https://aka.ms/posette-playlist 📌 Let’s connect: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/posetteconf/ X – @PosetteConf, https://x.com/PosetteConf Mastodon – @posetteconf, https://mastodon.social/@posetteconf Bluesky – @posetteconf.com, https://aka.ms/posette-on-bluesky Microsoft for Postgres LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-for-postgresql #PosetteConf #PostgreSQL #Microsoft