Post Content
See how Postgres can become a better analytics database. Marco Slot (Snowflake) explains how in his talk “pg_lake: Postgres as a lakehouse” at POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2026. Abstract: When Postgres is bad at something, we can make it good at it through extensions. Postgres is not a good analytics database. Its analytical query performance is relatively, it has no facilities for interacting with object storage, and only supports basic CSV as a file format.
pg_lake is a set of open source Postgres extensions that add the ability to query/import/export raw data files in your data lake via simple SQL commands commands, and create and manage Iceberg tables with high analytical query performance. It enables you to use Postgres as a versatile data “lakehouse”.
This talk describes how pg_lake extends Postgres and introduces a new query engine (by “de-embedding” DuckDB), a new table storage engine (Iceberg), and seamlessly integrates them with all existing Postgres features and transactions in a production-ready way. We also show various new patterns that have emerged for using pg_lake, and how it combines with the pg_incremental extension.
Marco Slot is a Principal Software Engineer on the Postgres team at Snowflake. He previously led the development of Citus at Citus Data, which was later acquired by Microsoft, and in 2024 started working on Iceberg in Postgres at Crunchy Data, which was later acquired by Snowflake. Over the years, Marco co-created several widely used Postgres extensions, including Citus, pg_cron, pg_documentdb, and pg_lake.
► Video chapters:
⏩ 00:00 – Music & introduction
⏩ 00:37 – Lakehouse concept definition
⏩ 02:40 – Apache Iceberg explained
⏩ 03:43 – How pg_lake works with PostgreSQL & history
⏩ 05:59 – PostgreSQL demos: files, queries, & exports
⏩ 08:05 – Iceberg internals & transactions
⏩ 13:02 – Fast analytics with DuckDB
⏩ 14:37 – Building pipelines with pg_incremental
⏩ 16:25 – Examples: archiving, event queues, & auto-load JSON logs
⏩ 21:31 – Connecting to warehouses & ecosystems
⏩ 23:21 – Key takeaways and closing
📕 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
#PosetteConf #PostgreSQL #Analytics Read More Microsoft Developer
