Florents Tselai
Florents (Flo) Tselai is a data generalist and open-source developer with deep expertise in database internals and extension development. He’s the author of multiple database extensions, primarily for PostgreSQL, and frequently for SQLite and DuckDB, blending AI, web scraping, and data journalism. He also created diofanti.org, a public tool for tracking government spending in Greece.
https://github.com/Florents-Tselai
Session
What if your database could run Python code inside SQL? In this talk, we’ll explore how to extend popular databases using Python—without needing to write a line of C.
We’ll cover three systems—SQLite, DuckDB, and PostgreSQL—and show how Python can be used in each to build custom SQL functions, accelerate data workflows, and prototype analytical logic. Each database offers a unique integration path:
- SQLite and DuckDB allow you to register Python functions directly into SQL via sqlite3.create_function, making it easy to inject business logic or custom transformations.
- PostgreSQL offers PL/Python, a full-featured procedural language for writing SQL functions in Python. We’ll also touch on advanced use cases, including embedding the Python interpreter directly into a PostgreSQL extension for deeper integration.
By the end of this talk, you’ll understand the capabilities, limitations, and gotchas of Python-powered extensions in each system—and how to choose the right tool depending on your use case, whether you’re analyzing data, building pipelines, or hacking on your own database.