How to load data from Gitlab to TiDB

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

Try Airbyte Cloud

Get a demo

Building your pipeline or Using Airbyte

Airbyte is the only open solution empowering data teams to meet all their growing custom business demands in the new AI era.

Building in-house pipelines

Bespoke pipelines are:

Inconsistent and inaccurate data
Laborious and expensive
Brittle and inflexible

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

After Airbyte

Airbyte connections are:

Reliable and accurate
Extensible and scalable for all your needs
Deployed and governed your way

All your pipelines in minutes, however custom they are, thanks to Airbyte’s connector marketplace and Connector Builder.

Start syncing with Airbyte in 3 easy steps within 10 minutes

Set up a Gitlab connector in Airbyte

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

Set up TiDB for your extracted Gitlab data

Select TiDB where you want to import data from your Gitlab source to. You can also choose other cloud data warehouses, databases, data lakes, vector databases, or any other supported Airbyte destinations.

Configure the Gitlab 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.

Try Airbyte Cloud

Take a virtual tour

Check out our interactive demo and our how-to videos to learn how you can sync data from any source to any destination.

Demo video of Airbyte Cloud

Demo video of AI Connector Builder

Talk to our team

Old Automated Content

TL;DR

set up Gitlab 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 Gitlab

GitLab is web-based Git repository manager. Whereas GitHub emphasizes infrastructure performance, GitLab’s focus is a features-oriented system. As an open-source collaborative platform, it enables developers to create code, review work, and deploy codebases collaboratively. It offers wiki, code reviews, built-in CI/CD, issue-tracking features, and much more.

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 Gitlab with TiDB in minutes

Try for free now

Prerequisites

A Gitlab 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 Gitlab and TiDB, for seamless data migration.

When using Airbyte to move data from Gitlab to TiDB, it extracts data from Gitlab 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 Gitlab data for advanced analytics and insights within TiDB, simplifying the ETL process and saving significant time and resources.

Step 1: Set up Gitlab as a source connector

1. First, navigate to the GitLab source connector page on Airbyte.com.

2. Click on the "Add Source" button to begin the process of adding your GitLab credentials.

3. In the "Connection Configuration" section, enter a name for your GitLab connection.

4. Next, enter your GitLab API token in the "Personal Access Token" field. You can generate a new token in your GitLab account settings.

5. In the "GitLab URL" field, enter the URL for your GitLab instance.

6. In the "Project ID" field, enter the ID of the project you want to connect to. You can find this ID in the URL of the project page on GitLab.

7. If you want to include only certain branches or tags in your data sync, you can specify them in the "Branches" and "Tags" fields.

8. Finally, click on the "Test" button to ensure that your credentials are correct and that Airbyte can connect to your GitLab instance.

9. If the test is successful, click on the "Save" button to save your GitLab connection.

10. You can now use this connection to create a new GitLab source in Airbyte and begin syncing your data.

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 Gitlab data to TiDB

Once you've successfully connected Gitlab 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 Gitlab 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 Gitlab 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 Gitlab 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 Gitlab data.

Use Cases to transfer your Gitlab data to TiDB

Integrating data from Gitlab 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 Gitlab data, extracting insights that wouldn't be possible within Gitlab alone.
Data Consolidation: If you're using multiple other sources along with Gitlab, 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: Gitlab 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 Gitlab 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 Gitlab data.
Data Science and Machine Learning: By having Gitlab data in TiDB, you can apply machine learning models to your data for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, and more.
Reporting and Visualization: While Gitlab 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 Gitlab 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 Gitlab 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 Gitlab 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!

What should you do next?

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Here are the 3 ways we can help you in your data journey:

Easily address your data movement needs with Airbyte Cloud

Take the first step towards extensible data movement infrastructure that will give a ton of time back to your data team.

Get started with Airbyte for free

Talk to a data infrastructure expert

Get a free consultation with an Airbyte expert to significantly improve your data movement infrastructure.

Talk to sales

Improve your data infrastructure knowledge

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and get the community’s new enlightening content along with Airbyte’s progress in their mission to solve data integration once and for all.

Subscribe to newsletter

What sets Airbyte Apart

Modern GenAI Workflows

Streamline AI workflows with Airbyte: load unstructured data into vector stores like Pinecone, Weaviate, and Milvus. Supports RAG transformations with LangChain chunking and embeddings from OpenAI, Cohere, etc., all in one operation.

Move Large Volumes, Fast

Quickly get up and running with a 5-minute setup that supports both incremental and full refreshes, for databases of any size.

An Extensible Open-Source Standard

More than 1,000 developers contribute to Airbyte’s connectors, different interfaces (UI, API, Terraform Provider, Python Library), and integrations with the rest of the stack. Airbyte’s Connector Builder lets you edit or add new connectors in minutes.

Full Control & Security

Airbyte secures your data with cloud-hosted, self-hosted or hybrid deployment options. Single Sign-On (SSO) and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) ensure only authorized users have access with the right permissions. Airbyte acts as a HIPAA conduit and supports compliance with CCPA, GDPR, and SOC2.

Fully Featured & Integrated

Airbyte automates schema evolution for seamless data flow, and utilizes efficient Change Data Capture (CDC) for real-time updates. Select only the columns you need, and leverage our dbt integration for powerful data transformations.

Enterprise Support with SLAs

Airbyte Self-Managed Enterprise comes with dedicated support and guaranteed service level agreements (SLAs), ensuring that your data movement infrastructure remains reliable and performant, and expert assistance is available when needed.

What our users say

Jean-Mathieu Saponaro

Data & Analytics Senior Eng Manager

"The intake layer of Datadog’s self-serve analytics platform is largely built on Airbyte.Airbyte’s ease of use and extensibility allowed any team in the company to push their data into the platform - without assistance from the data team!"

Learn more

Chase Zieman

Chief Data Officer

“Airbyte helped us accelerate our progress by years, compared to our competitors. We don’t need to worry about connectors and focus on creating value for our users instead of building infrastructure. That’s priceless. The time and energy saved allows us to disrupt and grow faster.”

Learn more

Alexis Weill

Data Lead

“We chose Airbyte for its ease of use, its pricing scalability and its absence of vendor lock-in. Having a lean team makes them our top criteria. The value of being able to scale and execute at a high level by maximizing resources is immense”

Learn more

How to Sync Gitlab to TiDB Manually

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Step 4:

Step 5:

Step 6:

Step 7:

Step 8:

FAQs

What is ETL?

ETL, an acronym for Extract, Transform, Load, is a vital data integration process. It involves extracting data from diverse sources, transforming it into a usable format, and loading it into a database, data warehouse or data lake. This process enables meaningful data analysis, enhancing business intelligence.

What is Gitlab?

What data can you extract from Gitlab?

GitLab's API provides access to a wide range of data related to a user's GitLab account and projects. The following are the categories of data that can be accessed through GitLab's API:

1. User data: This includes information about the user's profile, such as name, email, and avatar.

2. Project data: This includes information about the user's projects, such as project name, description, and visibility.

3. Repository data: This includes information about the user's repositories, such as repository name, description, and access level.

4. Issue data: This includes information about the user's issues, such as issue title, description, and status.

5. Merge request data: This includes information about the user's merge requests, such as merge request title, description, and status.

6. Pipeline data: This includes information about the user's pipelines, such as pipeline status, duration, and job details.

7. Job data: This includes information about the user's jobs, such as job status, duration, and artifacts.

8. Group data: This includes information about the user's groups, such as group name, description, and visibility.

Overall, GitLab's API provides access to a comprehensive set of data that can be used to automate and streamline various aspects of a user's GitLab workflow.

How do I transfer data from Gitlab?

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:
1. Set up GitLab to TiDB as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
2. Choose a destination (more than 50 available destination databases, data warehouses or lakes) to sync data too and set it up as a destination connector
3. Define which data you want to transfer from GitLab to TiDB and how frequently
You can choose to self-host the pipeline using Airbyte Open Source or have it managed for you with Airbyte Cloud.

What is ELT?

ELT, standing for Extract, Load, Transform, is a modern take on the traditional ETL data integration process. In ELT, data is first extracted from various sources, loaded directly into a data warehouse, and then transformed. This approach enhances data processing speed, analytical flexibility and autonomy.

Difference between ETL and ELT?

ETL and ELT are critical data integration strategies with key differences. ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) transforms data before loading, ideal for structured data. In contrast, ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) loads data before transformation, perfect for processing large, diverse data sets in modern data warehouses. ELT is becoming the new standard as it offers a lot more flexibility and autonomy to data analysts.

Back to all tutorials

Databases

Engineering Analytics

How to load data from Gitlab to TiDB

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

Try Airbyte Cloud free

Deploy Airbyte Open Source

Step 3: Setup a connection Use Cases Wrapping Up

Example H2

Example H3

Sync data between Gitlab and TiDB

Get your data syncing in minutes

Try Airbyte free

TL;DR

set up Gitlab 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 Gitlab