How to load data from Postgres to Databricks Lakehouse

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Postgres data into Databricks Lakehouse 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 Postgres connector in Airbyte

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

Set up Databricks Lakehouse for your extracted Postgres data

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

Configure the Postgres to Databricks Lakehouse 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 Postgres as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
set up Databricks Lakehouse 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 Postgres

An object-relational database management system, PostgreSQL is able to handle a wide range of workloads, supports multiple standards, and is cross-platform, running on numerous operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Solaris, Linux, and FreeBSD. It is highly extensible, and supports more than 12 procedural languages, Spatial data support, Gin and GIST Indexes, and more. Many webs, mobile, and analytics applications use PostgreSQL as the primary data warehouse or data store.

What is Databricks Lakehouse

Databricks is an American enterprise software company founded by the creators of Apache Spark. Databricks combines data warehouses and data lakes into a lakehouse architecture.

Integrate Postgres with Databricks Lakehouse in minutes

Try for free now

Prerequisites

A Postgres account to transfer your customer data automatically from.
A Databricks Lakehouse 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 Postgres and Databricks Lakehouse, for seamless data migration.

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

Step 1: Set up Postgres as a source connector

1. Open your PostgreSQL database and create a new user with the necessary permissions to access the data you want to replicate.

2. Obtain the hostname or IP address of your PostgreSQL server and the port number it is listening on.

3. Create a new database in PostgreSQL that will be used to store the replicated data.

4. Obtain the name of the database you just created.

5. In Airbyte, navigate to the PostgreSQL source connector and click on "Create Connection".

6. Enter a name for your connection and fill in the required fields, including the hostname or IP address, port number, database name, username, and password.

7. Test the connection to ensure that Airbyte can successfully connect to your PostgreSQL database.

8. Select the tables or views you want to replicate and configure any necessary settings, such as the replication frequency and the replication method.

9. Save your configuration and start the replication process.

10. Monitor the replication process to ensure that it is running smoothly and troubleshoot any issues that arise.

Step 2: Set up Databricks Lakehouse 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 "Databricks Lakehouse" connector and click on it.
4. You will be prompted to enter your Databricks Lakehouse credentials, including your account name, personal access token, and workspace ID.
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 Databricks Lakehouse destination connector settings.
7. You can now use the Databricks Lakehouse connector to transfer data from your source connectors to your Databricks Lakehouse destination.
8. To set up a data transfer, navigate to the "Sources" tab and select the source connector that you want to use.
9. Follow the prompts to enter your source connector credentials and configure your data transfer settings.
10. Once you have configured your source connector, select the Databricks Lakehouse connector as your destination and follow the prompts to configure your data transfer settings.
11. Click on the "Run" button to initiate the data transfer.

Step 3: Set up a connection to sync your Postgres data to Databricks Lakehouse

Once you've successfully connected Postgres as a data source and Databricks Lakehouse 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 Postgres from the dropdown list of your configured sources.
Select your destination: Choose Databricks Lakehouse 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 Postgres objects you want to import data from towards Databricks Lakehouse. 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 Postgres to Databricks Lakehouse according to your settings.

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

Use Cases to transfer your Postgres data to Databricks Lakehouse

Integrating data from Postgres to Databricks Lakehouse provides several benefits. Here are a few use cases:

Advanced Analytics: Databricks Lakehouse’s powerful data processing capabilities enable you to perform complex queries and data analysis on your Postgres data, extracting insights that wouldn't be possible within Postgres alone.
Data Consolidation: If you're using multiple other sources along with Postgres, syncing to Databricks Lakehouse 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: Postgres has limits on historical data. Syncing data to Databricks Lakehouse allows for long-term data retention and analysis of historical trends over time.
Data Security and Compliance: Databricks Lakehouse provides robust data security features. Syncing Postgres data to Databricks Lakehouse ensures your data is secured and allows for advanced data governance and compliance management.
Scalability: Databricks Lakehouse can handle large volumes of data without affecting performance, providing an ideal solution for growing businesses with expanding Postgres data.
Data Science and Machine Learning: By having Postgres data in Databricks Lakehouse, you can apply machine learning models to your data for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, and more.
Reporting and Visualization: While Postgres provides reporting tools, data visualization tools like Tableau, PowerBI, Looker (Google Data Studio) can connect to Databricks Lakehouse, providing more advanced business intelligence options. If you have a Postgres table that needs to be converted to a Databricks Lakehouse table, Airbyte can do that automatically.

Wrapping Up

To summarize, this tutorial has shown you how to:

Configure a Postgres account as an Airbyte data source connector.
Configure Databricks Lakehouse as a data destination connector.
Create an Airbyte data pipeline that will automatically be moving data directly from Postgres to Databricks Lakehouse 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

Sync with Airbyte

Step 1: Set up Postgres as a source connector

1. Open your PostgreSQL database and create a new user with the necessary permissions to access the data you want to replicate.

2. Obtain the hostname or IP address of your PostgreSQL server and the port number it is listening on.

3. Create a new database in PostgreSQL that will be used to store the replicated data.

4. Obtain the name of the database you just created.

5. In Airbyte, navigate to the PostgreSQL source connector and click on "Create Connection".

6. Enter a name for your connection and fill in the required fields, including the hostname or IP address, port number, database name, username, and password.

7. Test the connection to ensure that Airbyte can successfully connect to your PostgreSQL database.

8. Select the tables or views you want to replicate and configure any necessary settings, such as the replication frequency and the replication method.

9. Save your configuration and start the replication process.

10. Monitor the replication process to ensure that it is running smoothly and troubleshoot any issues that arise.

Step 2: Set up Databricks Lakehouse as a destination connector

Step 3: Set up a connection to sync your Postgres data to Databricks Lakehouse

Once you've successfully connected Postgres as a data source and Databricks Lakehouse 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 Postgres from the dropdown list of your configured sources.
Select your destination: Choose Databricks Lakehouse 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 Postgres objects you want to import data from towards Databricks Lakehouse. 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 Postgres to Databricks Lakehouse according to your settings.

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

How to Sync Postgres to Databricks Lakehouse 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 Postgres?

What data can you extract from Postgres?

PostgreSQL gives access to a wide range of data types, including:

1. Numeric data types: This includes integers, floating-point numbers, and decimal numbers.

2. Character data types: This includes strings, text, and character arrays.

3. Date and time data types: This includes dates, times, and timestamps.

4. Boolean data types: This includes true/false values.

5. Network address data types: This includes IP addresses and MAC addresses.

6. Geometric data types: This includes points, lines, and polygons.

7. Array data types: This includes arrays of any of the above data types.

8. JSON and JSONB data types: This includes JSON objects and arrays.

9. XML data types: This includes XML documents.

10. Composite data types: This includes user-defined data types that can contain multiple fields of different data types.

Overall, PostgreSQL's API provides access to a wide range of data types, making it a versatile and powerful tool for data management and analysis.

How do I transfer data from Postgres?

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 PostgreSQL to Databricks Lakehouse 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 PostgreSQL to Databricks Lakehouse 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

Warehouses and Lakes

Databases

How to load data from Postgres to Databricks Lakehouse

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Postgres data into Databricks Lakehouse within minutes.

Try Airbyte Cloud free

Deploy Airbyte Open Source

TL;DR

What is Postgres

What is Databricks Lakehouse

Prerequisites

Step 1: Setup Postgres

Step 2: Setup Databricks Lakehouse

Step 3: Setup a connection Use Cases Wrapping Up

Example H2

Example H3

Sync data between Postgres and Databricks Lakehouse

Get your data syncing in minutes

Try Airbyte free

TL;DR

set up Postgres as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
set up Databricks Lakehouse 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 Postgres

What is Databricks Lakehouse

Databricks is an American enterprise software company founded by the creators of Apache Spark. Databricks combines data warehouses and data lakes into a lakehouse architecture.

Integrate Postgres with Databricks Lakehouse in minutes

Try for free now

Prerequisites

A Postgres account to transfer your customer data automatically from.
A Databricks Lakehouse 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.

Step 1: Set up Postgres as a source connector

1. Open your PostgreSQL database and create a new user with the necessary permissions to access the data you want to replicate.

2. Obtain the hostname or IP address of your PostgreSQL server and the port number it is listening on.

3. Create a new database in PostgreSQL that will be used to store the replicated data.

4. Obtain the name of the database you just created.

5. In Airbyte, navigate to the PostgreSQL source connector and click on "Create Connection".

6. Enter a name for your connection and fill in the required fields, including the hostname or IP address, port number, database name, username, and password.

7. Test the connection to ensure that Airbyte can successfully connect to your PostgreSQL database.

8. Select the tables or views you want to replicate and configure any necessary settings, such as the replication frequency and the replication method.

9. Save your configuration and start the replication process.

10. Monitor the replication process to ensure that it is running smoothly and troubleshoot any issues that arise.

Step 2: Set up Databricks Lakehouse as a destination connector

Step 3: Set up a connection to sync your Postgres data to Databricks Lakehouse

Once you've successfully connected Postgres as a data source and Databricks Lakehouse 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 Postgres from the dropdown list of your configured sources.
Select your destination: Choose Databricks Lakehouse 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 Postgres objects you want to import data from towards Databricks Lakehouse. 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 Postgres to Databricks Lakehouse according to your settings.

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

Use Cases to transfer your Postgres data to Databricks Lakehouse

Integrating data from Postgres to Databricks Lakehouse provides several benefits. Here are a few use cases:

Advanced Analytics: Databricks Lakehouse’s powerful data processing capabilities enable you to perform complex queries and data analysis on your Postgres data, extracting insights that wouldn't be possible within Postgres alone.
Data Consolidation: If you're using multiple other sources along with Postgres, syncing to Databricks Lakehouse 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: Postgres has limits on historical data. Syncing data to Databricks Lakehouse allows for long-term data retention and analysis of historical trends over time.
Data Security and Compliance: Databricks Lakehouse provides robust data security features. Syncing Postgres data to Databricks Lakehouse ensures your data is secured and allows for advanced data governance and compliance management.
Scalability: Databricks Lakehouse can handle large volumes of data without affecting performance, providing an ideal solution for growing businesses with expanding Postgres data.
Data Science and Machine Learning: By having Postgres data in Databricks Lakehouse, you can apply machine learning models to your data for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, and more.
Reporting and Visualization: While Postgres provides reporting tools, data visualization tools like Tableau, PowerBI, Looker (Google Data Studio) can connect to Databricks Lakehouse, providing more advanced business intelligence options. If you have a Postgres table that needs to be converted to a Databricks Lakehouse table, Airbyte can do that automatically.