How to load data from US Census to Kafka

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your US Census data into Kafka 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 US Census connector in Airbyte

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

Set up Kafka for your extracted US Census data

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

Configure the US Census 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.

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 US Census 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 US Census

The U.S. Census Bureau takes the pulse of the country’s economy. Producing economic data monthly, quarterly, yearly, and at five-year intervals requires high-tech solutions. The U.S. Census Bureau, in response to this need, has built an its first ever iPhone application, aimed at providing users with important economic statistics quickly and easily directly from an iPhone: the America’s Economy application.

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 US Census with Kafka in minutes

Try for free now

Prerequisites

A US Census 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 US Census and Kafka, for seamless data migration.

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

Step 1: Set up US Census as a source connector

1. Open the Airbyte platform and navigate to the "Sources" tab on the left-hand side of the screen.
2. Scroll down until you find the "US Census" source connector and click on it.
3. Click on the "Create Connection" button to begin setting up your connection to the US Census data source.
4. In the "Connection Configuration" page, enter a name for your connection and provide your API key in the "API Key" field.
5. Click on the "Test Connection" button to ensure that your credentials are correct and that the connection is working properly.
6. Once the connection has been successfully tested, click on the "Create" button to save your connection settings.
7. You can now use this connection to extract data from the US Census data source by creating a new pipeline and selecting the US Census source connector as your source.
8. Follow the prompts to configure your pipeline and select the data you want to extract from the US Census data source.
9. Once your pipeline is configured, you can run it to extract data from the US Census data source and load it into your destination data warehouse or data lake.

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 US Census data to Kafka

Once you've successfully connected US Census 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 US Census 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 US Census 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 US Census 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 US Census data.

Use Cases to transfer your US Census data to Kafka

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

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 US Census to Kafka 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 US Census?

What data can you extract from US Census?

The US Census Bureau's API provides access to a wide range of data related to the United States population and economy. The following are the categories of data that can be accessed through the API:

1. Demographic data: This includes information on population size, age, gender, race, ethnicity, and household characteristics.
2. Economic data: This includes data on employment, income, poverty, and industry.
3. Housing data: This includes data on housing units, occupancy, and characteristics of housing units.
4. Education data: This includes data on educational attainment, enrollment, and school districts.
5. Geographic data: This includes data on boundaries, locations, and maps.
6. Health data: This includes data on health insurance coverage, disability, and healthcare facilities.
7. Transportation data: This includes data on commuting patterns, modes of transportation, and traffic.
8. Business data: This includes data on businesses, employment, and revenue.
9. Agriculture data: This includes data on crops, livestock, and farms.
10. International data: This includes data on international trade, migration, and foreign-born population.

How do I transfer data from US Census?

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 US Census 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 US Census 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.

Back to all tutorials

Databases

Others

How to load data from US Census to Kafka

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

Try Airbyte Cloud free

Deploy Airbyte Open Source

Step 1: Setup US Census

Step 2: Setup Kafka

Step 3: Setup a connection Use Cases Wrapping Up

Example H2

Example H3

Sync data between US Census and Kafka

Get your data syncing in minutes

Try Airbyte free

TL;DR

set up US Census 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 US Census

What is Kafka

Integrate US Census with Kafka in minutes

Try for free now

Prerequisites

A US Census 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.

Step 1: Set up US Census as a source connector

Step 2: Set up Kafka as a destination connector

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

Once you've successfully connected US Census 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 US Census 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 US Census 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 US Census 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 US Census data.

Use Cases to transfer your US Census data to Kafka

Integrating data from US Census 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 US Census data, extracting insights that wouldn't be possible within US Census alone.
Data Consolidation: If you're using multiple other sources along with US Census, 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: US Census 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 US Census 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 US Census data.
Data Science and Machine Learning: By having US Census data in Kafka, you can apply machine learning models to your data for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, and more.
Reporting and Visualization: While US Census 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 US Census table that needs to be converted to a Kafka table, Airbyte can do that automatically.