Databases
Files

How to load data from Smartsheets to TiDB

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

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:

  1. set up Smartsheets as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
  2. set up TiDB as a destination connector
  3. 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 Smartsheets

A cloud-based management platform, Smartsheet empowers businesses to accomplish all things business. Smartsheet drives collaboration, supports better decision making, and accelerates innovation, enabling businesses to advance from ideation to impact in record time. Chosen by more than 70,000 brands in 190 different countries, Smartsheet simply makes business smarter—and simpler, since it integrates seamlessly with applications businesses already use from Google, Atlassian, Salesforce, Microsoft, and 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 Smartsheets with TiDB in minutes

Try for free now

Prerequisites

  1. A Smartsheets account to transfer your customer data automatically from.
  2. A TiDB account.
  3. 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 Smartsheets and TiDB, for seamless data migration.

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

Step 1: Set up Smartsheets as a source connector

1. Open the Smartsheets source connector page on Airbyte.com.
2. Click on the "Add Source" button.
3. Enter a name for your Smartsheets source connector.
4. Enter your Smartsheets API access token in the "API Access Token" field.
5. Enter your Smartsheets account ID in the "Account ID" field.
6. Click on the "Test" button to ensure that the credentials are correct.
7. If the test is successful, click on the "Save & Continue" button.
8. Select the tables that you want to replicate from Smartsheets.
9. Choose the replication frequency and the destination where you want to store the data.
10. Click on the "Create Connection" button to start the replication process.  

Once you have completed these steps, Airbyte will start replicating the data from your Smartsheets account to the destination that you have chosen. You can monitor the replication process and view the data in the destination by logging into your Airbyte account.

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 Smartsheets data to TiDB

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

  1. Create a new connection: On the Airbyte dashboard, navigate to the 'Connections' tab and click the '+ New Connection' button.
  2. Choose your source: Select Smartsheets from the dropdown list of your configured sources.
  3. Select your destination: Choose TiDB from the dropdown list of your configured destinations.
  4. 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.
  5. Select the data to sync: Choose the specific Smartsheets objects you want to import data from towards TiDB. You can sync all data or select specific tables and fields.
  6. 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.
  7. Test your connection: Click the 'Test Connection' button to make sure that your setup works. If the connection test is successful, save your configuration.
  8. Start the sync: If the test passes, click 'Set Up Connection'. Airbyte will start moving data from Smartsheets 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 Smartsheets data.

Use Cases to transfer your Smartsheets data to TiDB

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

  1. Advanced Analytics: TiDB’s powerful data processing capabilities enable you to perform complex queries and data analysis on your Smartsheets data, extracting insights that wouldn't be possible within Smartsheets alone.
  2. Data Consolidation: If you're using multiple other sources along with Smartsheets, 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.
  3. Historical Data Analysis: Smartsheets has limits on historical data. Syncing data to TiDB allows for long-term data retention and analysis of historical trends over time.
  4. Data Security and Compliance: TiDB provides robust data security features. Syncing Smartsheets data to TiDB ensures your data is secured and allows for advanced data governance and compliance management.
  5. Scalability: TiDB can handle large volumes of data without affecting performance, providing an ideal solution for growing businesses with expanding Smartsheets data.
  6. Data Science and Machine Learning: By having Smartsheets data in TiDB, you can apply machine learning models to your data for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, and more.
  7. Reporting and Visualization: While Smartsheets 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 Smartsheets 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:

  1. Configure a Smartsheets account as an Airbyte data source connector.
  2. Configure TiDB as a data destination connector.
  3. Create an Airbyte data pipeline that will automatically be moving data directly from Smartsheets 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:

flag icon
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
high five icon
Talk to a data infrastructure expert
Get a free consultation with an Airbyte expert to significantly improve your data movement infrastructure. 
Talk to sales
stars sparkling
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

Connectors Used

What should you do next?

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

flag icon
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
high five icon
Talk to a data infrastructure expert
Get a free consultation with an Airbyte expert to significantly improve your data movement infrastructure. 
Talk to sales
stars sparkling
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

Connectors Used

Frequently Asked Questions

What data can you extract from Smartsheets?

Smartsheet's API provides access to a wide range of data types, including:

1. Sheets: Access to all sheets within a Smartsheet account, including their metadata and contents.
2. Rows: Access to individual rows within a sheet, including their metadata and contents.
3. Columns: Access to individual columns within a sheet, including their metadata and contents.
4. Cells: Access to individual cells within a sheet, including their metadata and contents.
5. Attachments: Access to all attachments associated with a sheet, row, or cell.
6. Comments: Access to all comments associated with a sheet, row, or cell.
7. Users: Access to information about users within a Smartsheet account, including their metadata and permissions.
8. Groups: Access to information about groups within a Smartsheet account, including their metadata and membership.
9. Reports: Access to all reports within a Smartsheet account, including their metadata and contents.
10. Templates: Access to all templates within a Smartsheet account, including their metadata and contents.  

Overall, Smartsheet's API provides a comprehensive set of tools for accessing and manipulating data within a Smartsheet account, making it a powerful tool for developers and businesses looking to integrate Smartsheet into their workflows.

What data can you transfer to TiDB?

You can transfer a wide variety of data to TiDB. This usually includes structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data like transaction records, log files, JSON data, CSV files, and more, allowing robust, scalable data integration and analysis.

What are top ETL tools to transfer data from Smartsheets to TiDB?

The most prominent ETL tools to transfer data from Smartsheets to TiDB include:

  • Airbyte
  • Fivetran
  • Stitch
  • Matillion
  • Talend Data Integration

These tools help in extracting data from Smartsheets and various sources (APIs, databases, and more), transforming it efficiently, and loading it into TiDB and other databases, data warehouses and data lakes, enhancing data management capabilities.