When ADBC launched, the pitch was compelling: zero-copy columnar data movement, vendor neutrality, Arrow-native performance. But then production happened. Turns out creating a new connectivity standard was the easy part! The hard part is observability for queries mysteriously failing, type mappings that work for 90% of schemas but explode on that one user’s TIMESTAMP WITH TIMEZONE, driver discovery and so on. This talk shares what we’ve learned from ADBC getting used in production environments. We’ll explore the maturation of the ADBC ecosystem: Driver manifests for discovery, connection profiles, type support evolution, and more. Expect war stories, concrete adoption guidance, and honestly admitting where there are still gaps.