JDBC Sink Connector

The JDBC sink connector allows you to export data from Kafka topics to any relational database with a JDBC driver. By using JDBC, this connector can support a wide variety of databases without requiring a dedicated connector for each one. The connector polls data from Kafka to write to the database based on the topics subscription. It is possible to achieve idempotent writes with upserts. Auto-creation of tables, and limited auto-evolution is also supported.

Quick Start

Prerequisites:

  • Confluent Platform is installed and services are running by using the Confluent CLI. This quick start assumes that you are using the Confluent CLI, but standalone installations are also supported. By default ZooKeeper, Kafka, Schema Registry, Kafka Connect REST API, and Kafka Connect are started with the confluent start command. For more information, see Installation Formats.
  • SQLite is installed. You can also use another database. If you are using another database, be sure to adjust the connection.url setting. Confluent Platform includes JDBC drivers for SQLite and PostgreSQL, but if you’re using a different database you must also verify that the JDBC driver is available on the Kafka Connect process’s CLASSPATH.
  • Kafka and Schema Registry are running locally on the default ports.

To see the basic functionality of the connector, we’ll be copying Avro data from a single topic to a local SQLite database.

Create SQLite Database and Load Data

  1. Create a SQLite database with this command:

    $ sqlite3 test.db
    

    Your output should resemble:

    SQLite version 3.19.3 2017-06-27 16:48:08
    Enter ".help" for usage hints.
    sqlite>
    
  2. In the SQLite command prompt, create a table and seed it with some data:

    sqlite> CREATE TABLE accounts(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT NOT NULL, name VARCHAR(255));
    
    sqlite> INSERT INTO accounts(name) VALUES('alice');
    
    sqlite> INSERT INTO accounts(name) VALUES('bob');
    

    Tip

    You can run SELECT * from accounts; to verify your table has been created.

Load the JDBC Sink Connector

Load the predefined JDBC sink connector.

  1. Optional: View the available predefined connectors with this command:

    confluent list connectors
    

    Your output should resemble:

    Bundled Predefined Connectors (edit configuration under etc/):
      elasticsearch-sink
      file-source
      file-sink
      jdbc-source
      jdbc-sink
      hdfs-sink
      s3-sink
    
  2. Load the the jdbc-sink connector:

    confluent load jdbc-sink
    

    Your output should resemble:

    {
      "name": "jdbc-sink",
      "config": {
        "connector.class": "io.confluent.connect.jdbc.JdbcSinkConnector",
        "tasks.max": "1",
        "topics": "orders",
        "connection.url": "jdbc:sqlite:test.db",
        "auto.create": "true",
        "name": "jdbc-sink"
      },
      "tasks": [],
      "type": null
    }
    

Tip

For non-CLI users, you can load the JDBC sink connector with this command:

<path-to-confluent>/bin/connect-standalone \
<path-to-confluent>/etc/schema-registry/connect-avro-standalone.properties \
<path-to-confluent>/etc/kafka-connect-jdbc/sink-quickstart-sqlite.properties

Produce a Record in SQLite

  1. Produce a record into the orders topic.

    $ ./bin/kafka-avro-console-producer \
     --broker-list localhost:9092 --topic orders \
     --property value.schema='{"type":"record","name":"myrecord","fields":[{"name":"id","type":"int"},{"name":"product", "type": "string"}, {"name":"quantity", "type": "int"}, {"name":"price",
     "type": "float"}]}'
    

    The console producer waits for input.

  2. Copy and paste the following record into the terminal and press Enter:

    {"id": 999, "product": "foo", "quantity": 100, "price": 50}
    
  3. Query the SQLite database and you should see that the orders table was automatically created and contains the record.

    $ sqlite3 test.db
    sqlite> SELECT * from orders;
    foo|50.0|100|999
    

Features

The sink connector requires knowledge of schemas, so you should use a suitable converter e.g. the Avro converter that comes with the schema registry, or the JSON converter with schemas enabled. Kafka record keys if present can be primitive types or a Connect struct, and the record value must be a Connect struct. Fields being selected from Connect structs must be of primitive types. If the data in the topic is not of a compatible format, implementing a custom Converter may be necessary.

The default is for primary keys to not be extracted with pk.mode set to none, which is not suitable for advanced usage such as upsert semantics and when the connector is responsible for auto-creating the destination table. There are different modes that enable to use fields from the Kafka record key, the Kafka record value, or the Kafka coordinates for the record.

Refer to primary key configuration options for further detail.

The default insert.mode is insert. If it is configured as upsert, the connector will use upsert semantics rather than plain INSERT statements. Upsert semantics refer to atomically adding a new row or updating the existing row if there is a primary key constraint violation, which provides idempotence.

If there are failures, the Kafka offset used for recovery may not be up-to-date with what was committed as of the time of the failure, which can lead to re-processing during recovery. The upsert mode is highly recommended as it helps avoid constraint violations or duplicate data if records need to be re-processed.

Aside from failure recovery, the source topic may also naturally contain multiple records over time with the same primary key, making upserts desirable.

As there is no standard syntax for upsert, the following table describes the database-specific DML that is used.

Database Upsert style
MySQL INSERT .. ON DUPLICATE KEY REPLACE ..
Oracle MERGE ..
PostgreSQL INSERT .. ON CONFLICT .. DO UPDATE SET ..
SQLite INSERT OR REPLACE ..
SQL Server MERGE ..
Other not supported

Tip

Make sure the JDBC user has the appropriate permissions for DDL.

If auto.create is enabled, the connector can CREATE the destination table if it is found to be missing. The creation takes place online with records being consumed from the topic, since the connector uses the record schema as a basis for the table definition. Primary keys are specified based on the key configuration settings.

If auto.evolve is enabled, the connector can perform limited auto-evolution by issuing ALTER on the destination table when it encounters a record for which a column is found to be missing. Since data-type changes and removal of columns can be dangerous, the connector does not attempt to perform such evolutions on the table. Addition of primary key constraints is also not attempted.

For both auto-creation and auto-evolution, the nullability of a column is based on the optionality of the corresponding field in the schema, and default values are also specified based on the default value of the corresponding field if applicable. We use the following mapping from Connect schema types to database-specific types:

Schema Type MySQL Oracle PostgreSQL SQLite SQL Server Vertica
INT8 TINYINT NUMBER(3,0) SMALLINT NUMERIC TINYINT INT
INT16 SMALLINT NUMBER(5,0) SMALLINT NUMERIC SMALLINT INT
INT32 INT NUMBER(10,0) INT NUMERIC INT INT
INT64 BIGINT NUMBER(19,0) BIGINT NUMERIC BIGINT INT
FLOAT32 FLOAT BINARY_FLOAT REAL REAL REAL FLOAT
FLOAT64 DOUBLE BINARY_DOUBLE DOUBLE PRECISION REAL FLOAT FLOAT
BOOLEAN TINYINT NUMBER(1,0) BOOLEAN NUMERIC BIT BOOLEAN
STRING VARCHAR(256) NCLOB TEXT TEXT VARCHAR(MAX) VARCHAR(1024)
BYTES VARBINARY(1024) BLOB BYTEA BLOB VARBINARY(MAX) VARBINARY(1024)
‘Decimal’ DECIMAL(65,s) NUMBER(*,s) DECIMAL NUMERIC DECIMAL(38,s) DECIMAL(18,s)
‘Date’ DATE DATE DATE NUMERIC DATE DATE
‘Time’ TIME(3) DATE TIME NUMERIC TIME TIME
‘Timestamp’ TIMESTAMP(3) TIMESTAMP TIMESTAMP NUMERIC DATETIME2 TIMESTAMP

Auto-creation or auto-evolution is not supported for databases not mentioned here.

Important

For backwards-compatible table schema evolution, new fields in record schemas must be optional or have a default value. If you need to delete a field, the table schema should be manually altered to either drop the corresponding column, assign it a default value, or make it nullable.