How to load data from Unleash to Kafka

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Unleash data into Kafka within minutes.

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Set up a Unleash connector in Airbyte

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

Set up Kafka for your extracted Unleash data

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

Configure the Unleash to Kafka 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

set up Unleash as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
set up Kafka 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 Unleash

Unleash is a global innovation lab that brings together entrepreneurs, investors, and corporations to collaborate on solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges. The program focuses on themes such as sustainable energy, food security, and healthcare, and provides participants with access to mentorship, funding, and resources to develop their ideas into viable businesses. Unleash also emphasizes diversity and inclusion, with a goal of bringing together individuals from diverse backgrounds and perspectives to drive innovation and create positive social impact. The program culminates in a week-long innovation lab where participants pitch their ideas and collaborate on solutions to global challenges.

What is Kafka

A communication solutions agency, Kafka is a cloud-based / on-prem distributed system offering social media services, public relations, and events. For event streaming, three main functionalities are available: the ability to (1) subscribe to (read) and publish (write) streams of events, (2) store streams of events indefinitely, durably, and reliably, and (3) process streams of events in either real-time or retrospectively. Kafka offers these capabilities in a secure, highly scalable, and elastic manner.

Integrate Unleash with Kafka in minutes

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Prerequisites

A Unleash account to transfer your customer data automatically from.
A Kafka 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 Unleash and Kafka, for seamless data migration.

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

Step 1: Set up Unleash as a source connector

1. First, navigate to the Airbyte website and create an account.
2. Once you have logged in, click on the ""Sources"" tab on the left-hand side of the screen.
3. Scroll down until you find the ""Unleash"" source connector and click on it.
4. Click on the ""Create Connection"" button to begin setting up your Unleash source connector.
5. Enter the necessary information, such as the name of your connection and your Unleash API key.
6. Choose the tables you want to sync from Unleash to Airbyte.
7. Test the connection to ensure that it is working properly.
8. Once you have successfully tested the connection, click on the ""Create Connection"" button to finalize the setup.
9. Your Unleash source connector is now connected to Airbyte and ready to start syncing data.

Step 2: Set up Kafka as a destination connector

1. First, you need to have an Apache Kafka destination connector installed on your system. If you don't have it, you can download it from the Apache Kafka website.
2. Once you have the Apache Kafka destination connector installed, you need to create a new connection in Airbyte. To do this, go to the Connections tab and click on the "New Connection" button. 3. In the "New Connection" window, select "Apache Kafka" as the destination connector and enter the required connection details, such as the Kafka broker URL, topic name, and authentication credentials.
4. After entering the connection details, click on the "Test Connection" button to ensure that the connection is working properly.
5. If the connection test is successful, click on the "Save" button to save the connection.
6. Once the connection is saved, you can create a new pipeline in Airbyte and select the Apache Kafka destination connector as the destination for your data.
7. In the pipeline configuration, select the connection you created in step 3 as the destination connection.
8. Configure the pipeline to map the source data to the appropriate Kafka topic and fields.
9. Once the pipeline is configured, you can run it to start sending data to your Apache Kafka destination.

Step 3: Set up a connection to sync your Unleash data to Kafka

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

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

Use Cases to transfer your Unleash data to Kafka

Integrating data from Unleash to Kafka provides several benefits. Here are a few use cases:

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

Wrapping Up

To summarize, this tutorial has shown you how to:

Configure a Unleash account as an Airbyte data source connector.
Configure Kafka as a data destination connector.
Create an Airbyte data pipeline that will automatically be moving data directly from Unleash to Kafka 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 Unleash to Kafka Manually

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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 Unleash?

What data can you extract from Unleash?

Unleash's API provides access to various types of data related to feature flags and experimentation. The following are the categories of data that can be accessed through the API:

1. Feature flags: The API provides access to all the feature flags created in the Unleash dashboard, including their names, descriptions, and configurations.

2. Metrics: The API provides access to various metrics related to feature flags, such as the number of times a feature flag was evaluated, the number of times it was enabled, and the percentage of users who saw the feature flag.

3. Events: The API provides access to events related to feature flags, such as when a feature flag was toggled on or off, when it was evaluated, and when it was enabled or disabled.

4. User targeting: The API provides access to user targeting information, such as the rules used to target specific users for a feature flag and the percentage of users who were targeted.

5. Experiments: The API provides access to information related to experiments, such as the name of the experiment, the variations being tested, and the metrics being tracked.

Overall, Unleash's API provides a comprehensive set of data related to feature flags and experimentation, allowing developers to gain insights into how their features are performing and make data-driven decisions.

How do I transfer data from Unleash?

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 Unleash to Kafka 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 Unleash to Kafka 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.

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How to load data from Unleash to Kafka

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Unleash data into Kafka within minutes.

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Deploy Airbyte Open Source

Step 1: Setup Unleash

Step 2: Setup Kafka

Step 3: Setup a connection Use Cases Wrapping Up

Example H2

Example H3

Sync data between Unleash and Kafka

Get your data syncing in minutes

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TL;DR

set up Unleash as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
set up Kafka 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 Unleash