PostgreSQL at Microsoft: Open Source, AI, & Cloud | Claire Giordano | PGConf.EU 2026

Slides from the Microsoft sponsor keynote at PGConf.EU 2026 I presented in Valencia. Abstract: PostgreSQL is one of the most important data platforms in the world, powering everything from startups to some of the largest enterprise and SaaS applications in production today. Microsoft's investment in PostgreSQL spans the upstream open-source community, cloud-scale database services, and the tools developers use to build modern applications.

This talk covers how Microsoft approaches PostgreSQL, from contributions to the core project and support for the broader ecosystem to operating PostgreSQL at cloud scale on Azure. It looks at how AI is enhancing the developer and database management experience, and how Azure HorizonDB extends PostgreSQL to support the scale, performance, and operational demands of today’s applications.

Transcript

1. PostgreSQL at Microsoft: Open Source, AI, & Cloud Claire Giordano PostgreSQL Significant Contributor @ Microsoft PGConf.EU 2026 @Microsoft for PostgreSQL
3. th Happy 30 Birthday to the Postgres project
4. How many of you have already picked up your database socks @ Microsoft booth?
5. We’ve been giving away database socks since Milan! PGConf.EU 2019 PGConf.EU 2025 PGConf.EU 2026
6. things you might not know (yet) 01 PostgreSQL project 02 Cloud 03 AI & Developer tools
7. Microsoft’s investment in the Postgres project starts with people Alexander Kukushkin Amit Langote Andres Freund Ashutosh Bapat Ashutosh Sharma Ayush Tiwari Claire Giordano Cornelia Biacsics Daniel Gustafsson David Rowley Melanie Plageman Nazir Bilal Yavuz Nitin Jadhav Noah Misch Palak Chaturvedi Richard Guo Satya Narlapuram Thomas Munro Tomas Vondra Vinod Sridharan
8. Contributing to the upstream Postgres project is necessary— Upstream project Upstream Postgres open-source project Contributions that benefit upstream open-source project ALSO benefit our downstream Azure customers Downstream services: Downstream services Azure Database for PostgreSQL Azure HorizonDB
9. What might not be obvious— Upstream project Upstream Postgres open-source project Learnings from Azure customers also benefit the Postgres project Downstream services: Downstream services Azure Database for PostgreSQL Azure HorizonDB
10. Commits are an imperfect measure of value, impact, & accomplishment.”
11. Gratitude for all the amazing Postgres 19 work! *As of Postgres 19 RC1 on 15 Oct 2026 3,723 Commits to date in Postgres 19* 4,098 Author commits to date in Postgres 19* 7,240 Patch reviews to date in Postgres 19*
12. Performance & Efficiency Faster tuple deformation Fast path for foreign key checks Faster COPY using SIMD Parallel TID range scan On-access visibility map updates Postgres 19 Just some of the features the Microsoft team has authored (or co-authored) Reduced vacuum WAL generation Operability, security, & SQL Automated resizing of AIO workers New EXPLAIN (IO) for better I/O visibility Security CVEs (with whole PG community) Server-side SNI support
13. Franck Pachot of Microsoft demo’d a few of these PG19 features @ PGConfEU Watch the yesterday recording on YouTube, once published
14. Where our Microsoft team is focusing in Postgres 20 Storage, I/O, & concurrency Planner & executor Index pre-fetching Star join improvements Shared buffer resizing without restart Improved large-join algorithms Async writes Executor batching Multi-threading preparatory work Selective deformation Write combining: larger writes per I/O op Improved locking with high # partitions
15. Supporting & Sponsoring Postgres Community Events PGDay UK PGConf.EU 2026 P2D2 PGDay
16. Financial Sponsorship — and much more! Organizing teams Program Committees Financial Sponsorship Speakers PGDay UK PGConf.EU 2026 P2D2 PGDay
17. Microsoft is a Benefactor Sponsor of the PostgreSQL project
18. 50 amazing guests on TalkingPostgres.com
19. #4 POSETTE: An Event for Postgres
20. The Toothbrush Test
21. Azure Database for PostgreSQL Nine of the ways Microsoft contributes to Postgres ​ Postgres, PostgreSQL and the Slonik Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada, and used with their permission. Azure HorizonDB POSETTE: An Event for Postgres Microsoft Blog for PostgreSQL Visual Studio Code Extension Benefactor Sponsor of PGCA & the PostgreSQL project Talking Postgres podcast Supporting Postgres Events Upstream Contributions to Postgres
22. Cloud
23. General Availability Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server Managed service for PostgreSQL
24. Day 0 PostgreSQL Availability in Azure No Cloud Lag. With PG19, No Upgrade Lag. Days to Ship PostgreSQL on Azure 300 272 250 214 200 150 2025 · Postgres 18 2026 · Postgres 19 Day 0 New server creation Day 0 Day 1 Shipped Sep 25, 2025 Nov 19, 2026 · open source GA target Major Version Upgrade Terraform support 100 50 31 0 Postgres 14 Postgres 15 Postgres 16 3 0 0* Postgres 17 Postgres 18 Postgres 19
25. Driving Azure Database for PostgreSQL forward
26. What’s new with Postgres at Microsoft, 2026 edition aka.ms/blog-pg-at-microsoft
27. Azure HorizonDB Built for Business. Engineered for Builders. Scale to 3,072 vCores and 128TB storage Up to 3x faster transactions and vector search <1 millisecond multi-zone commit latency
28. Azure HorizonDB Architecture Cloud Native PostgreSQL Max Node Size 192 vCores Commit Latency < 1 ms Faster Failovers Read/Write Read-only Writer Node Reader Node Endpoint Read-only Endpoint Load balanced Load balanced Reader Node Reader Node Reader Node ~ 5 sec ✓ HA (Zone Redundancy) Pay for storage used Read Nodes Up to 128 TB Up to 15 Default Pool Zone Resilient WAL Storage Read Pool 1 Zone Resilient Shared Data Storage Multi-Availability Zone by default + more Read Pools
29. CMUDB talk by Adam Prout about Azure HorizonDB aka.ms/talk-HorizonDB-cmudb
30. Gifts in the open-source world
31. Have you heard about? pg_durable
32. Stay tuned for more Azure HorizonDB news at Microsoft Ignite!
33. AI & Developer tools
34. I think we can all agree that AI has changed things in our day to day.”
35. Where AI meets PostgreSQL on Azure AI helps you work on Postgres Postgres does AI work for your app
36. AI Pipelines Your AI steps, written in SQL Run inside the database Survive crashes, retry failures In Azure HorizonDB Source: Microsoft Learn: Implement AI pipelines in Azure HorizonDB
37. Database Agent From problem to proposed fix
38. VS Code extension works with any Postgres database aka.ms/pgsql-vscode
39. VS Code extension for PostgreSQL Schema Visualization
41. VS Code extension for PostgreSQL Execution Plans
43. VS Code extension for PostgreSQL AI-Assisted Debugging
46. Introducing pghacker-mcp pghacker-mcp github.com/Azure-Samples/pghacker-mcp
47. pghacker-mcp.dev
48. Thank you, & Come say hello at the Microsoft booth!