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Integrate data lakes with Tiger Cloud

Unify the Tiger Cloud operational architecture with data lake architectures

Tiger Cloud Iceberg connector enables you to build real-time applications alongside efficient data pipeline management within a single system.

Tiger Lake architecture: Iceberg connector in Tiger Cloud

Tiger Cloud Iceberg connector is a native integration enabling synchronization between hypertables and relational tables running in Tiger Cloud services to Iceberg tables running in Amazon S3 Tables in your AWS account.

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”

To follow the steps on this page:

Note

This feature is currently not supported for Tiger Cloud on Microsoft Azure.

Integrate a data lake with your service

Section titled “Integrate a data lake with your service”

To connect a Tiger Cloud service to your data lake:

  1. Set the AWS region to host your table bucket

    1. In AWS CloudFormation, select the current AWS region at the top-right of the page.
    2. Set it to the Region you want to create your table bucket in.

    This must match the region your Tiger Cloud service is running in: if the regions do not match AWS charges you for cross-region data transfer.

  2. Create your CloudFormation stack

    1. Click Create stack, then select With new resources (standard).

    2. In Amazon S3 URL, paste the following URL, then click Next.

      https://tigerlake.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/tigerlake-connect-cloudformation.yaml

    3. In Specify stack details, enter the following details, then click Next:

      • Stack Name: a name for this CloudFormation stack
      • BucketName: a name for this S3 table bucket
      • ProjectID and ServiceID: enter the connection details for your Tiger Cloud Iceberg connector service

    4. In Configure stack options check I acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources, then click Next.

    5. In Review and create, click Submit, then wait for the deployment to complete. AWS deploys your stack and creates the S3 table bucket and IAM role.

    6. Click Outputs, then copy all four outputs.

  3. Connect your service to the data lake

    1. In Tiger Console, select the service you want to integrate with AWS S3 Tables, then click Connectors.

    2. Select the Apache Iceberg connector and supply the:

      • ARN of the S3Table bucket
      • ARN of a role with permissions to write to the table bucket

    Provisioning takes a couple of minutes.

Stream data from your service to your data lake

Section titled “Stream data from your service to your data lake”

Records are imported in time order, from oldest to newest. Your hypertable or relational table must have a primary key, or composite primary keys as a prerequisite to sync to Iceberg.

When you start syncing, all data in the table is streamed to Iceberg in the following processes:

  • Table snapshot: stream data from a snapshot of the source table to the destination Iceberg table at approximately 300.000 records a second. For larger tables, import speeds are approximately 1 billion records or 100 GB of data an hour. However, these numbers vary on table width and the complexity of the schema.
  • Table changes: stream changes made to the source table (CDC) after the snapshot is taken to a branch of the destination Iceberg table. This happens at approximately 30.000 events a second. Ingest bursts exceeding this can be handled for a certain amount of time and feathered out over time. This depends on duration of the ingestion burst, and the amount of extra events to be handled.

Once the snapshot is fully imported, the snapshot and CDC Iceberg table branches are merged. Merging takes from a couple of seconds, to ten minutes for larger tables of 5TB or more. During this time, new events are held on the WAL. Once the merge is completed, events in the WAL are CDC’d to Iceberg. This implies eventual consistency of the Iceberg table after you started the the sync.

To stream data from a PostgreSQL relational table, or a hypertable in your Tiger Cloud service to your data lake, run the following statement:

ALTER TABLE <table_name> SET (
  tigerlake.iceberg_sync = true | false,
  tigerlake.iceberg_partitionby = '<partition_specification>',
  tigerlake.iceberg_namespace = '<namespace>',
  tigerlake.iceberg_table = '<table>'
)
  • tigerlake.iceberg_sync: boolean, set to true to start streaming, or false to stop the stream. A stream cannot resume after being stopped.
  • tigerlake.iceberg_partitionby: optional property to define a partition specification in Iceberg. By default the Iceberg table is partitioned as day(<time-column of {HYPERTABLE}>). This default behavior is only applicable to hypertables. For more information, see partitioning.
  • tigerlake.iceberg_namespace: optional property to set a namespace, the default is timescaledb.
  • tigerlake.iceberg_table: optional property to specify a different table name. If no name is specified the PostgreSQL table name is used.

Partitioning intervals

Section titled “Partitioning intervals”

By default, the partition interval for an Iceberg table is one day(time-column) for a Hypertable. PostgreSQL table sync does not enable any partitioning in Iceberg for non-hypertables. You can set it using tigerlake.iceberg_partitionby. The following partition intervals and specifications are supported:

IntervalDescriptionSource types
hourExtract a date or timestamp day, as days from epoch. Epoch is 1970-01-01.date, timestamp, timestamptz
dayExtract a date or timestamp day, as days from epoch.date, timestamp, timestamptz
monthExtract a date or timestamp day, as days from epoch.date, timestamp, timestamptz
yearExtract a date or timestamp day, as days from epoch.date, timestamp, timestamptz
truncate[W]Value truncated to width W, see options

These partitions define the behavior using the Iceberg partition specification.

Sample code

Section titled “Sample code”

The following samples show you how to tune data sync from a hypertable or a PostgreSQL relational table to your data lake:

  • Sync a hypertable with the default one-day partitioning interval on the ts_column column

    To start syncing data from a hypertable to your data lake using the default one-day chunk interval as the partitioning scheme to the Iceberg table, run the following statement:

    ALTER TABLE my_hypertable SET (tigerlake.iceberg_sync = true);

    This is equivalent to day(ts_column).

  • Specify a custom partitioning scheme for a hypertable

    You use the tigerlake.iceberg_partitionby property to specify a different partitioning scheme for the Iceberg table at sync start. For example, to enforce an hourly partition scheme from the chunks on ts_column on a hypertable, run the following statement:

    ALTER TABLE my_hypertable SET (
      tigerlake.iceberg_sync = true,
      tigerlake.iceberg_partitionby = 'hour(ts_column)'
    );

  • Set the partition to sync relational tables

    PostgreSQL relational tables do not forward a partitioning scheme to Iceberg, you must specify the partitioning scheme using tigerlake.iceberg_partitionby when you start the sync. For example, for a standard PostgreSQL table to sync to the Iceberg table with daily partitioning , run the following statement:

    ALTER TABLE my_postgres_table SET (
      tigerlake.iceberg_sync = true,
      tigerlake.iceberg_partitionby = 'day(timestamp_col)'
    );

  • Stop sync to an Iceberg table for a hypertable or a PostgreSQL relational table

    ALTER TABLE my_hypertable SET (tigerlake.iceberg_sync = false);

  • Update or add the partitioning scheme of an Iceberg table

    To change the partitioning scheme of an Iceberg table, you specify the desired partitioning scheme using the tigerlake.iceberg_partitionby property. For example. if the samples table has an hourly (hour(ts)) partition on the ts timestamp column, to change to daily partitioning, call the following statement:

    ALTER TABLE samples SET (tigerlake.iceberg_partitionby = 'day(ts)');

    This statement is also correct for Iceberg tables without a partitioning scheme. When you change the partition, you do not have to pause the sync to Iceberg. Apache Iceberg handles the partitioning operation in function of the internal implementation.

Specify a different namespace

By default, tables are created in the the timescaledb namespace. To specify a different namespace when you start the sync, use the tigerlake.iceberg_namespace property. For example:

ALTER TABLE my_hypertable SET (
  tigerlake.iceberg_sync = true,
  tigerlake.iceberg_namespace = 'my_namespace'
);

Specify a different Iceberg table name

The table name in Iceberg is the same as the source table in Tiger Cloud. Some services do not allow mixed case, or have other constraints for table names. To define a different table name for the Iceberg table at sync start, use the tigerlake.iceberg_table property. For example:

ALTER TABLE Mixed_CASE_TableNAME SET (
  tigerlake.iceberg_sync = true,
  tigerlake.iceberg_table = 'my_table_name'
);

Limitations

Section titled “Limitations”
  • Service requires PostgreSQL 17.6 and above is supported.
  • Amazon S3 Tables Iceberg REST catalog only is supported.
  • In order to collect deletes made to data in the columstore, certain columnstore optimizations are disabled for hypertables, this includes Direct Compress.
  • The TRUNCATE statement is not supported, and does not truncate data in the corresponding Iceberg table.
  • Data in a hypertable that has been moved to the low-cost object storage tier is not synced.
  • Writing to the same S3 table bucket from multiple services is not supported, bucket-to-service mapping is one-to-one.
  • Iceberg snapshots are pruned automatically if the amount exceeds 2500.
  • A hypertable with long running continuous aggregates refresh transactions, plus 30 minutes, can cause issues with holding the replication slot too long. Please consider batching in these cases.