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Postgres

This page guides you through the process of setting up the Postgres destination connector.

Warning​

warning

Postgres, while an excellent relational database, is not a data warehouse. Please only consider using postgres as a destination for small data volumes (e.g. less than 10GB) or for testing purposes. For larger data volumes, we recommend using a data warehouse like BigQuery, Snowflake, or Redshift.

Prerequisites​

To use the Postgres destination, you'll need:

  • A Postgres server version 9.5 or above

HeroPixelonly supports connecting to your Postgres instances with SSL or TLS encryption. TLS is used by default.

You'll need the following information to configure the Postgres destination:

  • Host - The host name of the server.
  • Port - The port number the server is listening on. Defaults to the PostgreSQL™ standard port number (5432).
  • Username
  • Password
  • Default Schema Name - Specify the schema (or several schemas separated by commas) to be set in the search-path. These schemas will be used to resolve unqualified object names used in statements executed over this connection.
  • Database - The database name. The default is to connect to a database with the same name as the user name.
  • JDBC URL Params (optional)

Refer to this guide for more details

Configure Network Access​

Make sure your Postgres database can be accessed by HeroPixel If your database is within a VPC, you may need to allow access from the IP you're using to expose HeroPixel

Step 1: Set up Postgres​

Permissions​

You need a Postgres user with the following permissions:

  • can create tables and write rows.
  • can create schemas e.g:

You can create such a user by running:

CREATE USER hero_user WITH PASSWORD '<password>';
GRANT CREATE, TEMPORARY ON DATABASE <database> TO hero_user;

You can also use a pre-existing user but we highly recommend creating a dedicated user for HeroPixel

Step 2: Set up the Postgres connector in HeroPixel​

Target Database​

You will need to choose an existing database or create a new database that will be used to store synced data from HeroPixel

Naming Conventions​

From Postgres SQL Identifiers syntax:

  • SQL identifiers and key words must begin with a letter (a-z, but also letters with diacritical marks and non-Latin letters) or an underscore (_).

  • Subsequent characters in an identifier or key word can be letters, underscores, digits (0-9), or dollar signs ($).

    Note that dollar signs are not allowed in identifiers according to the SQL standard, so their use might render applications less portable. The SQL standard will not define a key word that contains digits or starts or ends with an underscore, so identifiers of this form are safe against possible conflict with future extensions of the standard.

  • The system uses no more than NAMEDATALEN-1 bytes of an identifier; longer names can be written in commands, but they will be truncated. By default, NAMEDATALEN is 64 so the maximum identifier length is 63 bytes

  • Quoted identifiers can contain any character, except the character with code zero. (To include a double quote, write two double quotes.) This allows constructing table or column names that would otherwise not be possible, such as ones containing spaces or ampersands. The length limitation still applies.

  • Quoting an identifier also makes it case-sensitive, whereas unquoted names are always folded to lower case.

  • In order to make your applications portable and less error-prone, use consistent quoting with each name (either always quote it or never quote it).

info

HeroPixelPostgres destination will create raw tables and schemas using the Unquoted identifiers by replacing any special characters with an underscore. All final tables and their corresponding columns are created using Quoted identifiers preserving the case sensitivity. Special characters in final tables are replaced with underscores.

  1. Log into your HeroPixelaccount.
  2. In the left navigation bar, click Destinations. In the top-right corner, click new destination.
  3. On the Set up the destination page, enter the name for the Postgres connector and select Postgres from the Destination type dropdown.
  4. Enter a name for your source.
  5. For the Host, Port, and DB Name, enter the hostname, port number, and name for your Postgres database.
  6. List the Default Schemas.
note

The schema names are case sensitive. The 'public' schema is set by default. Multiple schemas may be used at one time. No schemas set explicitly - will sync all of existing.

  1. For User and Password, enter the username and password you created for postgres.

  2. Toggle the switch to connect using SSL.

  3. For SSL Modes, select:

    • disable to disable encrypted communication between HeroPixeland the source
    • allow to enable encrypted communication only when required by the source
    • prefer to allow unencrypted communication only when the source doesn't support encryption
    • require to always require encryption. Note: The connection will fail if the source doesn't support encryption.
    • verify-ca to always require encryption and verify that the source has a valid SSL certificate
    • verify-full to always require encryption and verify the identity of the source

  4. To customize the JDBC connection beyond common options, specify additional supported JDBC URL parameters as key-value pairs separated by the symbol & in the JDBC URL Parameters (Advanced) field.

    Example: key1=value1&key2=value2&key3=value3

    These parameters will be added at the end of the JDBC URL that the HeroPixelwill use to connect to your Postgres database.

    The connector now supports connectTimeout and defaults to 60 seconds. Setting connectTimeout to 0 seconds will set the timeout to the longest time available.

    Note: Do not use the following keys in JDBC URL Params field as they will be overwritten by HeroPixel currentSchema, user, password, ssl, and sslmode.

warning

This is an advanced configuration option. Users are advised to use it with caution.

  1. For SSH Tunnel Method, select:

    • No Tunnel for a direct connection to the database
    • SSH Key Authentication to use an RSA Private as your secret for establishing the SSH tunnel
    • Password Authentication to use a password as your secret for establishing the SSH tunnel
warning

Since HeroPixelrequires encrypted communication, select SSH Key Authentication or Password Authentication if you selected disable, allow, or prefer as the SSL Mode; otherwise, the connection will fail.

  1. Click Set up destination.

Supported sync modes​

The Postgres destination connector supports the following sync modes:

Feature Supported?(Yes/No) Notes
Full Refresh Sync Yes
Incremental - Append Sync Yes
Incremental - Append + Deduped Yes
Namespaces Yes

Schema map​

Output Schema (Raw Tables)​

Each stream will be mapped to a separate raw table in Postgres. The default schema in which the raw tables are created is airbyte_internal. This can be overridden in the configuration. Each table will contain 3 columns:

  • _airbyte_raw_id: a uuid assigned by HeroPixelto each event that is processed. The column type in Postgres is VARCHAR.
  • _airbyte_extracted_at: a timestamp representing when the event was pulled from the data source. The column type in Postgres is TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE.
  • _airbyte_loaded_at: a timestamp representing when the row was processed into final table. The column type in Postgres is TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE.
  • _airbyte_data: a json blob representing with the event data. The column type in Postgres is JSONB.

Final Tables Data type mapping​

HeroPixelType Postgres Type
string VARCHAR
number DECIMAL
integer BIGINT
boolean BOOLEAN
object JSONB
array JSONB
timestamp_with_timezone TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE
timestamp_without_timezone TIMESTAMP
time_with_timezone TIME WITH TIME ZONE
time_without_timezone TIME
date DATE

Naming limitations​

Postgres restricts all identifiers to 63 characters or less. If your stream includes column names longer than 63 characters, they will be truncated to this length. If this results in two columns having the same name, HeroPixelmay modify these column names to avoid the collision.

Creating dependent objects​

caution

This section involves running DROP ... CASCADE on the tables that HeroPixelproduces. Make sure you fully understand the consequences before enabling this option. Permanent data loss is possible with this option!

You may want to create objects that depend on the tables generated by HeroPixel such as views. If you do so, we strongly recommend:

  • Using a tool like dbt to automate the creation
  • And using an orchestrator to trigger dbt.

This is because you will need to enable the "Drop tables with CASCADE" option. The connector sometimes needs to recreate the tables; if you have created dependent objects, Postgres will require the connector to run drop statements with CASCADE enabled. However, this will cause the connector to also drop the dependent objects. Therefore, you MUST have a way to recreate those dependent objects from scratch.

Vendor-Specific Connector Limitations​

warning

Not all implementations or deployments of a database will be the same. This section lists specific limitations and known issues with the connector based on how or where it is deployed.

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