Please tell us about yourself, and where you are from.

Hi! I am Akshat Jaimini, a final year undergraduate currently based out of Dehradun, India. I am working as an SDE Intern at a fintech firm called ION Group and will graduate soon in June, 2025.

How do you spend your free time? What are your hobbies?

Well there is always music! I enjoy playing piano or my flute (which I started learning recently). I love playing table-tennis and badminton as well. Occasionally, I also try to read some books.

Any Social Media channels of yours we should be aware of?

Yes I am active on the following platforms:

• LinkedIn
• Blog

Last book you read? Or a book you want to recommend to readers?

The last book that I read was - “The Greatest Deals of Warren Buffett - Glen Arnold”. A book that I would love to recommend to anyone would definitely be Dune Messiah. I got introduced to this series by my roommate in University and I have been a fan ever since!

Favorite movie, or show?

Interstellar is my favourite movie. As far as shows are concerned, I really love sitcoms like ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and ‘Modern Family’.

What does your ideal weekend look like?

I try to plan my weekends to get a mix of productive work as well as some energy boost. Every Saturday I try to go out at least for 3-4 hours and visit any new places around me, which helps me freshen up. Recently, I also started picking up new topics or papers to read and just increase my knowledge base over the weekend which has helped me a lot.

What is the best advice you ever got?

One of the best pieces of advice that I have received is: ‘Never Assume’. This simple statement is so powerful in itself as it forces you to look at everything in life using the scientific method.

When did you start using PostgreSQL, and why?

I started using PostgreSQL back in my first year of university for some of my personal and club projects just because I needed a good relational database. Eventually I started using it more and more and decided to contribute to the project via Google Summer of Code, 2023. Initially I worked along with the pg-web team, developing a testing harness for the official PostgreSQL website. I was really lucky to have Illaria Battiston and Stephen Frost as my mentors during that time and with their recommendation we also got a chance to present this GSoC project at PgConf.Eu, 2023. In PgConf.Eu I got a chance to attend Pavlo’s talk on PgWatch which got me interested in monitoring and observability.

Fast forward to 2024, under the mentorship of Pavlo, we completed another Google Summer Of Code project - RPC Sinks for PgWatch, extending the solutions ability to integrate with not only storage solutions but also message brokers like Apache Kafka and locally hosted Large Language Models to analyze the measurements collected and providing possible solutions to improve database performance. We also got to present this project in PgConf.Eu, 2024.

For 2025, I aim to become one of the hackers and continue my journey with PostgreSQL for the years ahead.

Do you remember which version of PostgreSQL you started with?

Yes, I started out with PostgreSQL 15 for my personal projects.

Have you studied at a university? If yes, was it related to computers? Did your study help you with your current job?

Yes, I am in my final year right now. I am specializing in Computer Engineering. I believe that the exposure to fundamental subjects in computer science has helped me lay a solid foundation and it has helped me throughout to understand how things work at their core.

What other databases are you using?

I also got exposed to DuckDB last year and I have to admit it is pretty powerful. I am pretty excited about the pg_duckdb extension as well as it combines the best of both worlds.

On which PostgreSQL-related projects are you currently working?

Currently I am involved with the development of the new commitfest app, trying to contribute as much as possible. I am also contributing to the pg_duckdb extension right now. I occasionally pick up patches in commitfests to review and learn more about PostgreSQL internals.

How do you contribute to PostgreSQL?

I have contributed to the ecosystem projects like pgweb-testing-harness, pgwatch and some third party extensions. As of now I am:

Maintaining the testing harness for the official postgresql website which allows me to find new ways to complain to Magnus!

Participating as a mentor in Google Summer of Code 2025, for pgwatch3

I am really excited about pg_duckdb so I am trying to stay more active in that development as well

Eventually, I wish to contribute more to the main PostgreSQL codebase as well, becoming one of the hackers!

What is your favorite PostgreSQL extension?

There are a lot but one of my favourite extensions has to be PostGIS. I was recently working on a project that required me to work with geospatial data and determine if certain coordinates fell within a specific radius, along with some other requirements. Having the ability to do that within my database without using any third-party services was a smooth experience.

Some other extensions that I love are pg_search (recently got to use it at an internal hackathon to develop an anomaly detection system) and pgvector because again they allow me to stay within the PostgreSQL ecosystem instead of wrangling around with multiple third party services for use cases like RAG, utilizing the powerful features that PostgreSQL offers out of the box

What is the feature you like most in the latest PostgreSQL version?

I really love the JSON_TABLE feature introduced in PostgreSQL 17.

Could you describe your PostgreSQL development toolbox?

For extension development, both in rust (pgrx) and C, I prefer using vscode+lldb. For the main postgresql codebase, since I only participate in patchreviews, I prefer sticking with neovim.

Which skills are a must have for a PostgreSQL user?

The obvious first answer will be a good command over SQL. Although it will be awesome if developers focus on understanding the overall working of the DBMS as well. It provides new insights as to how they can optimize the usage of PostgreSQL much better for their particular use case.

Which PostgreSQL conferences do you visit? Do you submit talks?

I try to attend as many conferences as possible. I have been a speaker at PGConf.EU 2023 and 2024 which were held in Prague and Athens respectively. Although I have to admit, I haven’t visited PgConf India yet.

My last two talks have been about the work I did during Google Summer of Code 2024 and 2025 but I also submit talks about some of my ventures experimenting with PostgreSQL extensions.

Do you think PostgreSQL has a high entry barrier?

As a user, no, because PostgreSQL has a lot of resources available online (and extensive documentation) for anyone to start using it.

As an ecosystem contributor, again no, as most of these projects have very well written documentation and some of them are really easy to get started with.

As a Hacker, I think it requires some more effort, but I have personally found the Hacking Workshops being organized by Robert Hass a game changer in this particular area.

What is your advice for people who want to start PostgreSQL developing - as in, contributing to the project. Where and how should they start?

Personally to be honest I don’t have a perfect plan as such but there are some things that I have realized so far in my journey.

If the hacking on PostgreSQL feels too intimidating, start with ecosystem tools like monitoring tools etc.

Try to work with extensions as they give you a certain amount of exposure to how the system works internally

Stay active in the community and ask questions! I think the PostgreSQL Discord Channel is perhaps one of the best places to do that right now.

Do you think PostgreSQL will be here for many years in the future?

Yes and I attribute it to the extensibility of the database and the motivated community behind it.

Would you recommend PostgreSQL for side projects?

Yes absolutely! It has been my goto database (most recently as a managed service on Neon) throughout University. The reasons are pretty simple, it’s open source, you can find a solution to almost any problem that you face and if you want some exotic feature directly inside the database you can always find/develop an extension to get that.

Are you reading the -hackers mailing list? Any other list?

Yes I am reading the -hackers list. I am also subscribed to the -www list.

What other places do you hang out?

You can always find me on Discord and Slack (although I might reply a little late there).

Which other Open Source projects are you involved or interested in?

Apart from PostgreSQL, I also got involved with ParadeDB and OpenTelemetry for a short while for a PostgreSQL exporter option. I also contributed a patch in SQLancer as well a while back (although I think there were some rewrites over it).

I would love to get more involved with DuckDB and Apache Pinot.

Anything else you like to add?

It has been a pretty rewarding experience with the PostgreSQL community so far. Being introduced to PostgreSQL was one of the best things that has happened to me. I have really enjoyed working in the ecosystem, participating in conferences and documenting my work. Through this platform I would like to thank Ilaria Battiston, Stephen Frost, Pavlo Golub, Boriss Mejías and Amul Sul for helping me throughout my journey so far!