Ingest data from PostgreSQL CDC
Change Data Capture (CDC) refers to the process of identifying and capturing data changes in a database, and then delivering the changes to a downstream service in real time.
RisingWave supports ingesting CDC data from PostgreSQL. Versions 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 of PostgreSQL are supported.
You can ingest CDC data from PostgreSQL into RisingWave in two ways:
- Using the built-in PostgreSQL CDC connector With this connector, RisingWave can connect to PostgreSQL databases directly to obtain data from the binlog without starting additional services.
- Using a CDC tool and a message broker You can use a CDC tool and then use the Kafka, Pulsar, or Kinesis connector to send the CDC data to RisingWave. For more details, see the Create source via event streaming systems topic.
Set up PostgreSQL
- Ensure that
wal_level
islogical
. Check by using the following statement.
By default, it is replica
. For CDC, you will need to set it to logical in the database configuration file (postgresql.conf
) or via a psql
command. The following command will change the wal_level
.
Keep in mind that changing the wal_level
requires a restart of the PostgreSQL instance and can affect database performance.
note
If you choose to create multiple CDC tables without using a shared source, be sure to set max_wal_senders
to be greater than or equal to the number of synced tables. By default, max_wal_senders
is 10.
2. Assign REPLICATION
, LOGIN
,and CREATEDB
role attributes to the user.
For an existing user, run the following statement to assign the attributes:
ALTER USER <username> REPLICATION LOGIN CREATEDB;
For a new user, run the following statement to create the user and assign the attributes:
CREATE USER <username> REPLICATION LOGIN CREATEDB;
You can check your role attributes by using the \du
psql command:
- Grant required privileges to the user. Run the following statements to grant the required privileges to the user.
You can use the following statement to check the privileges of the user to the tables:
An example result:
Notes about running RisingWave from binaries
If you are running RisingWave locally from binaries and intend to use the native CDC source connectors or the JDBC sink connector, make sure that you have JDK 11 or a later version installed in your environment.
Create a table using the native CDC connector
To ensure all data changes are captured, you must create a table or source and specify primary keys. See the CREATE TABLE command for more details.
Syntax
Syntax for creating a CDC source.
Syntax for creating a CDC table on top of this CDC Source. Note that a primary key is required and must be consistent with the upstream table. We must also specify the Postgres table name (pg_table_name
) which we are selecting from.
To check the progress of backfilling historical data, find the corresponding internal table using the SHOW INTERNAL TABLES command and query from it.
Connector parameters
Unless specified otherwise, the fields listed are required. Note that the value of these parameters should be enclosed in single quotation marks.
Field | Notes |
---|---|
hostname | Hostname of the database. |
port | Port number of the database. |
username | Username of the database. |
password | Password of the database. |
database.name | Name of the database. |
schema.name | Optional. Name of the schema. By default, the value is public. |
table.name | Name of the table that you want to ingest data from. |
slot.name | Optional. The replication slot for this PostgreSQL source. By default, a unique slot name will be randomly generated. Each source should have a unique slot name. Valid replication slot names must contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores, and be no longer than 63 characters. |
ssl.mode | Optional. The ssl.mode parameter determines the level of SSL/TLS encryption for secure communication with Postgres. It accepts three values: disabled, preferred, and required. The default value is disabled. When set to required, it enforces TLS for establishing a connection. |
publication.name | Optional. Name of the publication. By default, the value is rw_publication. For more information, see Multiple CDC source tables. |
publication.create.enable | Optional. By default, the value is ‘true’. If publication.name does not exist and this value is ‘true’, a publication.name will be created. If publication.name does not exist and this value is ‘false’, an error will be returned. |
transactional | Optional. Specify whether you want to enable transactions for the CDC table that you are about to create. By default, the value is ‘true’ for shared sources, and ‘false’ otherwise. This feature is also supported for shared CDC sources for multi-table transactions. For performance considerations, transactions involving changes to more than 4096 rows cannot be guaranteed. |
note
RisingWave implements CDC via PostgreSQL replication. Inspect the current progress via the pg_replication_slots view. Remove inactive replication slots via pg_drop_replication_slot(). RisingWave does not automatically drop inactive replication slots. You must do this manually to prevent WAL files from accumulating in the upstream PostgreSQL database.
The following fields are used when creating a CDC table.
Field | Notes |
---|---|
snapshot | Optional. If false, CDC backfill will be disabled and only upstream events that have occurred after the creation of the table will be consumed. This option can only be applied for tables created from a shared source. |
snapshot.interval | Optional. Specifies the barrier interval for buffering upstream events. The default value is 1. |
snapshot.batch_size | Optional. Specifies the batch size of a snapshot read query from the upstream table. The default value is 1000. |
Regarding the INCLUDE timestamp AS column_name
clause, it allows you to ingest the upstream commit timestamp. For historical data, the commit timestamp will be set to 1970-01-01 00:00:00+00:00
. Here is an example:
You can see the INCLUDE clause for more details.
Debezium parameters
Debezium v2.6 connector configuration properties can also be specified under the WITH
clause when creating a table or shared source. Add the prefix debezium.
to the connector property you want to include.
For instance, to skip unknown DDL statements, specify the schema.history.internal.skip.unparseable.ddl
parameter as debezium.schema.history.internal.skip.unparseable.ddl
.
Data format
Data is in Debezium JSON format. Debezium is a log-based CDC tool that can capture row changes from various database management systems such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server and generate events with consistent structures in real time. The PostgreSQL CDC connector in RisingWave supports JSON as the serialization format for Debezium data. The data format does not need to be specified when creating a table with postgres-cdc
as the source.
Metadata options
Below are the metadata columns available for PostgreSQL CDC.
Field | Notes |
---|---|
database_name | Name of the database. |
schema_name | Name of the schema. |
table_name | Name of the table. |
For instance, the person table below contains columns for typical personal information. It also includes metadata fields (database_name
, schema_name
, table_name
) to provide contextual information about where the data resides within the PostgreSQL database.
Examples
Connect to the upstream database by creating a CDC source using the CREATE SOURCE command and PostgreSQL CDC parameters. The data format is fixed as FORMAT PLAIN ENCODE JSON
so it does not need to be specified.
With the source created, you can create multiple CDC tables that ingest data from different tables and schemas in the upstream database without needing to specify the database connection parameters again.
For instance, the following CDC table in RisingWave ingests data from table tt3
in the schema public
. When specifying the PostgreSQL table name in the FROM
clause after the keyword TABLE
, the schema name must also be specified.
You can also create another CDC table in RisingWave that ingests data from table tt4
in the schema ods
.
To check the progress of backfilling historical data, find the corresponding internal table using the SHOW INTERNAL TABLES command and query from it.
Data type mapping
The following table shows the corresponding data type in RisingWave that should be specified when creating a source. For details on native RisingWave data types, see Overview of data types.
RisingWave data types marked with an asterisk indicate that while there is no corresponding RisingWave data type, the ingested data can still be consumed as the listed type.
NOTE
RisingWave cannot correctly parse composite types from PostgreSQL as Debezium does not support composite types in PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL type | RisingWave type |
---|---|
BOOLEAN | BOOLEAN |
BIT(1) | BOOLEAN |
BIT( > 1) | No support |
BIT VARYING[(M)] | No support |
SMALLINT, SMALLSERIAL | SMALLINT |
INTEGER, SERIAL | INTEGER |
BIGINT, BIGSERIAL, OID | BIGINT |
REAL | REAL |
DOUBLE PRECISION | DOUBLE PRECISION |
CHAR[(M)] | CHARACTER VARYING |
VARCHAR[(M)] | CHARACTER VARYING |
CHARACTER[(M)] | CHARACTER VARYING |
CHARACTER VARYING[(M)] | CHARACTER VARYING |
TIMESTAMPTZ, TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE | TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE |
TIMETZ, TIME WITH TIME ZONE | TIME WITHOUT TIME ZONE (assume UTC time zone) |
INTERVAL [P] | INTERVAL |
BYTEA | BYTEA |
JSON, JSONB | JSONB |
XML | CHARACTER VARYING |
UUID | CHARACTER VARYING |
POINT | STRUCT (with form <x REAL, y REAL>) |
LTREE | No support |
CITEXT | CHARACTER VARYING* |
INET | CHARACTER VARYING* |
INT4RANGE | CHARACTER VARYING* |
INT8RANGE | CHARACTER VARYING* |
NUMRANGE | CHARACTER VARYING* |
TSRANGE | CHARACTER VARYING* |
TSTZRANGE | CHARACTER VARYING* |
DATERANGE | CHARACTER VARYING* |
ENUM | CHARACTER VARYING* |
DATE | DATE |
TIME(1), TIME(2), TIME(3), TIME(4), TIME(5), TIME(6) | TIME WITHOUT TIME ZONE (limited to [1973-03-03 09:46:40, 5138-11-16 09:46:40)) |
TIMESTAMP(1), TIMESTAMP(2), TIMESTAMP(3) | TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE (limited to [1973-03-03 09:46:40, 5138-11-16 09:46:40)) |
TIMESTAMP(4), TIMESTAMP(5), TIMESTAMP(6), TIMESTAMP | TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE |
NUMERIC[(M[,D])], DECIMAL[(M[,D])] | numeric, rw_int256, or varchar. numeric supports values with a precision of up to 28 digits, and any values beyond this precision will be treated as NULL. To process values exceeding 28 digits, use rw_int256 or varchar instead. When creating a table, make sure to specify the data type of the column corresponding to numeric as rw_int256 or varchar. Note that rw_int256 treats inf, -inf, nan, or numeric with decimal parts as NULL. |
MONEY[(M[,D])] | NUMERIC |
HSTORE | No support |
HSTORE | No support |
INET | CHARACTER VARYING* |
CIDR | CHARACTER VARYING* |
MACADDR | CHARACTER VARYING* |
MACADDR8 | CHARACTER VARYING* |
Use dbt to ingest data from PostgreSQL CDC
Here is an example of how to use dbt to ingest data from PostgreSQL CDC. In this dbt example, source
and table_with_connector
models will be used. For more details about these two models, please refer to Use dbt for data transformations.
First, we create a source
model pg_mydb.sql
.
And then we create a table_with_connector
model tt3.sql
.
Automatically map upstream table schema
PREMIUM EDITION FEATURE
This feature is only available in the premium edition of RisingWave. The premium edition offers additional advanced features and capabilities beyond the free and community editions. If you have any questions about upgrading to the premium edition, please contact our sales team at sales@risingwave-labs.com.
PUBLIC PREVIEW
This feature is in the public preview stage, meaning it’s nearing the final product but is not yet fully stable. If you encounter any issues or have feedback, please contact us through our Slack channel. Your input is valuable in helping us improve the feature. For more information, see our Public preview feature list.
RisingWave supports automatically mapping the upstream table schema when creating a CDC table from a PostgreSQL CDC source. Instead of defining columns individually, you can use *
when creating a table to ingest all columns from the source table. Note that *
cannot be used if other columns are specified in the table creation process.
Below is an example to create a table that ingests all columns from the upstream table from the PostgreSQL database:
And this it the output of DESCRIBE supplier;
Monitor the progress of direct CDC
To observe the progress of direct CDC for PostgreSQL, use the following methods:
For historical data
Historical data needs to be backfilled into the table. You can check the internal state of the backfill executor as follows:
- Create a table to backfill historical data:
- List the internal tables to find the relevant backfill executor state:
Output:
- Check the internal state of the backfill executor:
Output:
For real-time data
RisingWave stores source offset in the internal state table of source executor. You can check the current consumed offset by checking this table and comparing it with the upstream database’s log offset.
The Postgres connector commits offsets to the upstream database, allowing Postgres to free up space used by Write-Ahead Log (WAL) files. This offset commitment happens during checkpoint commits in the CDC source. If there is high checkpoint point latency, WAL files may accumulate on the upstream server.
To check WAL accumulation on the upstream Postgres server, run this SQL query on upstream Postgres: