Foreign Data Wrappers: Accessing External Data from a PostgreSQL database

Foreign data wrappers are part of Postgres's implementation of the SQL/MED (Management of External Data) extension to the SQL standard, which provides the specs for accessing data that's not actually in your database.

This might sound stuffy and boring, but it's not!  If you're managing multiple datastores and want to Just Use Postgres, foreign data wrappers are a good option. There are loads of them available, for nearly every datastore you can think of, and you can write your own if you can't find what you're looking for.

This mostly-demo talk showcases two Postgres extensions: file_fdw, which allows you to query local resources from your database, and postgres_fdw, which allows you to query other postgres databases.  I'll cover use (and mis-use) cases, configuration of each, and interesting quirks.

Familiarity with psql is helpful but not required for this talk.