Tech Events & Workshops

A practical two-hour session investigating how SQLx can detect invalid SQL, incompatible parameters, missing columns, and incorrect Rust mappings during compilation rather than after deployment. The session follows a query through the boundary between Rust and the database: from the SQL text and bound parameters, through schema inspection and type analysis, to the Rust value returned to the application. We will deliberately break queries, change schemas, and introduce type mismatches to understand what SQLx can prove before runtime—and what it cannot. The emphasis is not on memorizing an API. It is on understanding the engineering model behind compile-time checked SQL, the role of migrations in preserving that model, and the practical consequences for local development, testing, continuous integration, and deployment. Audience: developers who want to understand how Rust can provide stronger guarantees around ordinary SQL without replacing SQL with an ORM or query language. Outcomes: * Trace how SQLx validates a query during compilation * Understand how database metadata informs Rust type checking * See compile-time failures caused by invalid queries and incompatible result types * Understand why the current schema matters during a build * Connect database migrations to query correctness * Distinguish checked macros from runtime query APIs * Evaluate when compile-time SQL checking improves a project and when it adds friction Format: two hours with a guided investigation, broken-query experiments, migration examples, discussion of operational tradeoffs, and a reusable checklist for database code.

A practical two-hour session on the principles behind document question-answering systems, with Rust as the implementation context. The session focuses on how applications can answer questions from a known set of documents instead of relying only on what a language model already knows. We will cover the core workflow: loading documents, preparing them for search, finding relevant passages, passing useful context to a model, and producing answers that stay connected to the source material. The goal is to teach the engineering ideas behind RAG systems without turning the session into a product demo or an abstract AI lecture. The emphasis is on system boundaries, retrieval quality, answer grounding, error handling, and the practical decisions developers need to make when building document-aware applications. Audience: entry-level and intermediate developers who want a practical session on document search, retrieval, grounded generation, and Rust application design. Outcomes: * Understand how document-based question answering systems work * Explain the purpose of chunking, embeddings, retrieval, and context assembly * Design a simple retrieve-first, answer-second workflow * Use Rust to organize the main parts of a small RAG application * Recognize common causes of poor or unsupported answers * Apply basic techniques for improving retrieval and answer quality * Think about how to evaluate whether the system is actually useful Format: two hours with a short framing walkthrough, a concrete example, discussion of tradeoffs, and a closing checklist for practice.