How to load data from Airtable to TiDB

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Airtable data into TiDB within minutes.

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Furthermore, you will need to build and maintain Y x Z pipelines with Y sources and Z destinations to cover all your needs.

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Set up a Airtable connector in Airbyte

Connect to Airtable or one of 400+ pre-built or 10,000+ custom connectors through simple account authentication.

Set up TiDB for your extracted Airtable data

Connect to Airtable or one of 400+ pre-built or 10,000+ custom connectors through simple account authentication.

Configure the Airtable to TiDB in Airbyte

This includes selecting the data you want to extract - streams and columns -, the sync frequency, where in the destination you want that data to be loaded.

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TL;DR

This can be done by building a data pipeline manually, usually a Python script (you can leverage a tool as Apache Airflow for this). This process can take more than a full week of development. Or it can be done in minutes on Airbyte in three easy steps:

set up Airtable as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
set up TiDB as a destination connector
define which data you want to transfer and how frequently

You can choose to self-host the pipeline using Airbyte Open Source or have it managed for you with Airbyte Cloud.

This tutorial’s purpose is to show you how.

What is Airtable

Airtable is a cloud collaboration service.

What is TiDB

TiDB is a distributed SQL database that is designed to handle large-scale online transaction processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP) workloads. It is an open-source, cloud-native database that is built to be highly available, scalable, and fault-tolerant. TiDB uses a distributed architecture that allows it to scale horizontally across multiple nodes, while also providing strong consistency guarantees. It supports SQL and offers compatibility with MySQL, which makes it easy for developers to migrate their existing applications to TiDB. TiDB is used by companies such as Didi Chuxing, Mobike, and Meituan-Dianping to power their mission-critical applications.

Integrate Airtable with TiDB in minutes

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Prerequisites

A Airtable account to transfer your customer data automatically from.
A TiDB account.
An active Airbyte Cloud account, or you can also choose to use Airbyte Open Source locally. You can follow the instructions to set up Airbyte on your system using docker-compose.

Airbyte is an open-source data integration platform that consolidates and streamlines the process of extracting and loading data from multiple data sources to data warehouses. It offers pre-built connectors, including Airtable and TiDB, for seamless data migration.

When using Airbyte to move data from Airtable to TiDB, it extracts data from Airtable using the source connector, converts it into a format TiDB can ingest using the provided schema, and then loads it into TiDB via the destination connector. This allows businesses to leverage their Airtable data for advanced analytics and insights within TiDB, simplifying the ETL process and saving significant time and resources.

Step 1: Set up Airtable as a source connector

1. Open the Airbyte dashboard and click on "Sources" on the left-hand side of the screen.
2. Click on the "New Source" button in the top right corner of the screen.
3. Select "Airtable" from the list of available sources.
4. Enter a name for your Airtable source connector.
5. Enter your Airtable API key in the "API Key" field. You can find your API key by logging into your Airtable account and navigating to the "Account" section of your profile.
6. Enter the base ID of the Airtable base you want to connect to in the "Base ID" field. You can find the base ID by navigating to the "Help" menu in your Airtable base and selecting "API documentation."
7. Click the "Test" button to ensure that your credentials are correct and that Airbyte can connect to your Airtable base.
8. If the test is successful, click the "Create" button to save your Airtable source connector.
9. You can now use your Airtable source connector to create a new Airbyte pipeline and start syncing data from your Airtable base to your destination of choice.

Step 2: Set up TiDB as a destination connector

1. First, navigate to the Airbyte website and log in to your account.
2. Once you are logged in, click on the "Destinations" tab on the left-hand side of the screen.
3. Scroll down until you find the TiDB destination connector and click on it.
4. You will be prompted to enter your TiDB database credentials, including the host, port, username, and password.
5. Once you have entered your credentials, click on the "Test" button to ensure that the connection is successful.
6. If the test is successful, click on the "Save" button to save your TiDB destination connector settings.
7. You can now use the TiDB destination connector to transfer data from your source connectors to your TiDB database.
8. To set up a data integration pipeline, navigate to the "Connections" tab on the left-hand side of the screen and create a new connection.
9. Select your TiDB destination connector as the destination and choose your source connector as the source.
10. Configure the settings for your data integration pipeline, including the frequency of data transfers and any data transformations that you want to apply.
11. Once you have configured your data integration pipeline, click on the "Save" button to save your settings.
12. Your data integration pipeline will now run automatically, transferring data from your source connectors to your TiDB database on a regular basis.

Step 3: Set up a connection to sync your Airtable data to TiDB

Once you've successfully connected Airtable as a data source and TiDB as a destination in Airbyte, you can set up a data pipeline between them with the following steps:

Create a new connection: On the Airbyte dashboard, navigate to the 'Connections' tab and click the '+ New Connection' button.
Choose your source: Select Airtable from the dropdown list of your configured sources.
Select your destination: Choose TiDB from the dropdown list of your configured destinations.
Configure your sync: Define the frequency of your data syncs based on your business needs. Airbyte allows both manual and automatic scheduling for your data refreshes.
Select the data to sync: Choose the specific Airtable objects you want to import data from towards TiDB. You can sync all data or select specific tables and fields.
Select the sync mode for your streams: Choose between full refreshes or incremental syncs (with deduplication if you want), and this for all streams or at the stream level. Incremental is only available for streams that have a primary cursor.
Test your connection: Click the 'Test Connection' button to make sure that your setup works. If the connection test is successful, save your configuration.
Start the sync: If the test passes, click 'Set Up Connection'. Airbyte will start moving data from Airtable to TiDB according to your settings.

Remember, Airbyte keeps your data in sync at the frequency you determine, ensuring your TiDB data warehouse is always up-to-date with your Airtable data.

Use Cases to transfer your Airtable data to TiDB

Integrating data from Airtable to TiDB provides several benefits. Here are a few use cases:

Advanced Analytics: TiDB’s powerful data processing capabilities enable you to perform complex queries and data analysis on your Airtable data, extracting insights that wouldn't be possible within Airtable alone.
Data Consolidation: If you're using multiple other sources along with Airtable, syncing to TiDB allows you to centralize your data for a holistic view of your operations, and to set up a change data capture process so you never have any discrepancies in your data again.
Historical Data Analysis: Airtable has limits on historical data. Syncing data to TiDB allows for long-term data retention and analysis of historical trends over time.
Data Security and Compliance: TiDB provides robust data security features. Syncing Airtable data to TiDB ensures your data is secured and allows for advanced data governance and compliance management.
Scalability: TiDB can handle large volumes of data without affecting performance, providing an ideal solution for growing businesses with expanding Airtable data.
Data Science and Machine Learning: By having Airtable data in TiDB, you can apply machine learning models to your data for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, and more.
Reporting and Visualization: While Airtable provides reporting tools, data visualization tools like Tableau, PowerBI, Looker (Google Data Studio) can connect to TiDB, providing more advanced business intelligence options. If you have a Airtable table that needs to be converted to a TiDB table, Airbyte can do that automatically.

Wrapping Up

To summarize, this tutorial has shown you how to:

Configure a Airtable account as an Airbyte data source connector.
Configure TiDB as a data destination connector.
Create an Airbyte data pipeline that will automatically be moving data directly from Airtable to TiDB after you set a schedule

With Airbyte, creating data pipelines take minutes, and the data integration possibilities are endless. Airbyte supports the largest catalog of API tools, databases, and files, among other sources. Airbyte's connectors are open-source, so you can add any custom objects to the connector, or even build a new connector from scratch without any local dev environment or any data engineer within 10 minutes with the no-code connector builder.

We look forward to seeing you make use of it! We invite you to join the conversation on our community Slack Channel, or sign up for our newsletter. You should also check out other Airbyte tutorials, and Airbyte’s content hub!

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How to Sync Airtable to TiDB Manually

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How to load data from Airtable to TiDB

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Airtable data into TiDB within minutes.

Try Airbyte Cloud free

Deploy Airbyte Open Source

Step 1: Setup Airtable

Step 2: Setup TiDB

Step 3: Setup a connection Use Cases Wrapping Up

Example H2

Example H3

Sync data between Airtable and TiDB

Get your data syncing in minutes

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TL;DR

set up Airtable as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
set up TiDB as a destination connector
define which data you want to transfer and how frequently

You can choose to self-host the pipeline using Airbyte Open Source or have it managed for you with Airbyte Cloud.

This tutorial’s purpose is to show you how.

What is Airtable

Airtable is a cloud collaboration service.