6 ms·

How to build a custom data connector in 2 hours

99 points by jeanlaf 5y ago

cgardens 5y ago
The next step is to make the tool easy enough to use such that GPT-3 could build a connector in 2 hours.
skadamat 5y ago
Exciting! Hoping to build Reddit & Stack Overflow connectors
- mtricot 5y ago
  Let us know if we can help on slack (https://slack.airbyte.io https://slack.airbyte.io) #connector-development or we can schedule a coding call call with you
justinzollars 5y ago
cool! Nice work
- jeanlaf 5y ago
  Thx!
renewiltord 5y ago
Very cool. Honestly, I’ve been using a mostly vanilla Airbyte. There are already enough connectors that I usually don’t need to write a new one. Pretty thrilled with how fast these guys have been going honestly. Only picked up their stuff a few months ago and there are already more and better connectors today than there were back then. I’ve been slowly moving over my error prone sync scripts to my Airbyte instance. Life is already better.
- jeanlaf 5y ago
  Makes our day to read your comment :)
justinzollars 5y ago
One question: who is your customer archetype?
- mtricot 5y ago
  Data engineers, data scientist & analytics engineers. People that be users of Airbyte but also can be contributors. For data engineers, the objectives is to help them empower other roles to be data fluent and have the freedom to move data without bugging data engineers
  - hobofan 5y ago
    How suited is Airbyte for multi-tennant use-cases? I might have a project coming up to build a semi-analytics solution where you would obviously want to allow the users to easily connect to their data sources, and Airbyte looks like it might be a good fit for that (for now my rough idea was to build some plumbing around Singer taps). Are you aware of any users that use it for such purposes and are there any specific pitfalls too look out for there?
    - mtricot 5y ago
      We do support separate workspaces but we don't have auth yet. However because there is an API available, you can always build the account segmentation and permissionning at your app level and only interact with Airbyte using the API.
thibaut_barrere 5y ago
Does anyone have some mid-long-term feedback on the use of the community edition of Airbyte in particular?
- arjie 5y ago
  What do you want to know? I've been using since late-Jan / early-Feb. I fired up an EC2 instance, docker-compose'd up, added the initial few syncs and then let people just add their own. Mostly without trouble since then, though I'm running an old version as a result of the fire-and-forget. (edit: also, text me on Keybase or email me since I don't get notifications for responses here)
smarx007 5y ago
Been waiting for some practical uses since I read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26650493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26650493. I forgot to ask back then if someone had experience with Apache Camel, Spring Integration, or similar and could compare it to the crop of SaaS offerings like Fivetran (that Airbyte itself is taking on by providing an OSS offering).
Evidlo 5y ago
Was hoping for something about rapid prototyping of electrical connectors.
- mtricot 5y ago
  In the end, data is transported as electrical current so it is not completely off :)
- therein 5y ago
  Same, I was expecting some 3D printing, maybe some experimentation about how much spacing is needed between pins for insulation and how large the contact surfaces should be etc. I was excited.
- afandian 5y ago
  This is a fun story in that vein: http://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-an-obsolete-connector/ http://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-a...
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    Low supply of DB 19 connectors? I'll bet this is why there are 10k Teslas that can't be delivered right now.
- tmh88j 5y ago
  That's what I was expecting as well. Guessing that "connector" an industry term that I'm just not aware of. Seems like some pre-made adapter patterns for ETL's from browsing the docs.
- buildbot 5y ago
  I actually would love a service that did this for something mortally/individually affordable.
dvaun 5y ago
This looks great. I’d love to throw up an instance locally and play with it at work, but that likely wouldn’t happen for a long time (local gov -> slow processes). That being said, I’ve got a fun project in mind which I may find a use case for this. I’ll give it a shot.
- mtricot 5y ago
  Thanks! let us know if we can help.
ducttapecrown 5y ago
What is a connector?
- sherifnada 5y ago
  It's a module which extracts data from a source (an API, database, etc..) or pushes data to a destination (warehouse, blob storage, API, etc..). They're ubiquitous in data engineering & analytics workflows where users often need to consolidate their data in one database or warehouse to build dashboards, run analyses, etc..
  - tmh88j 5y ago
    I already responded to a different comment in this thread, but you seem to be knowledgable on the subject. Is this a tool to assist with ETL's between otherwise incompatible sources/destinations?
    - jeanlaf 5y ago
      Indeed! You could use the CDK to build the data integration pipelines that your ETL solution doesn't support. Airbyte comes also with ~70 connectors. So if we already support the destination you want, you can only build the source connector that we might not support as well. Our goal is support 200 connectors by the end of the year and address the long tail of integrations in 2022 :).
jeanlaf 5y ago
If you want to have a look at the open-source GitHub project, here's the link: https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte
vincentdm 5y ago
Cool! We built something similar for on-premise data sources, in Clojure. https://basil.net https://basil.net
ncmncm 5y ago
It took a substantial fraction of two hours for the page to load.
- jeanlaf 5y ago
  Interesting. Where are you located? Thanks!
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    In New York. But the slow load (not really an hour, just felt like it) was probably Javascript overhead.

99 points by jeanlaf 5y ago

cgardens 5y ago

The next step is to make the tool easy enough to use such that GPT-3 could build a connector in 2 hours.

skadamat 5y ago

Exciting! Hoping to build Reddit & Stack Overflow connectors

mtricot 5y ago
Let us know if we can help on slack (https://slack.airbyte.io https://slack.airbyte.io) #connector-development or we can schedule a coding call call with you

justinzollars 5y ago

cool! Nice work

jeanlaf 5y ago
Thx!

renewiltord 5y ago

Very cool. Honestly, I’ve been using a mostly vanilla Airbyte. There are already enough connectors that I usually don’t need to write a new one. Pretty thrilled with how fast these guys have been going honestly. Only picked up their stuff a few months ago and there are already more and better connectors today than there were back then. I’ve been slowly moving over my error prone sync scripts to my Airbyte instance. Life is already better.

jeanlaf 5y ago
Makes our day to read your comment :)

justinzollars 5y ago

One question: who is your customer archetype?

mtricot 5y ago
Data engineers, data scientist & analytics engineers. People that be users of Airbyte but also can be contributors. For data engineers, the objectives is to help them empower other roles to be data fluent and have the freedom to move data without bugging data engineers
- hobofan 5y ago
  How suited is Airbyte for multi-tennant use-cases? I might have a project coming up to build a semi-analytics solution where you would obviously want to allow the users to easily connect to their data sources, and Airbyte looks like it might be a good fit for that (for now my rough idea was to build some plumbing around Singer taps). Are you aware of any users that use it for such purposes and are there any specific pitfalls too look out for there?
  - mtricot 5y ago
    We do support separate workspaces but we don't have auth yet. However because there is an API available, you can always build the account segmentation and permissionning at your app level and only interact with Airbyte using the API.

thibaut_barrere 5y ago

Does anyone have some mid-long-term feedback on the use of the community edition of Airbyte in particular?

arjie 5y ago
What do you want to know? I've been using since late-Jan / early-Feb. I fired up an EC2 instance, docker-compose'd up, added the initial few syncs and then let people just add their own. Mostly without trouble since then, though I'm running an old version as a result of the fire-and-forget. (edit: also, text me on Keybase or email me since I don't get notifications for responses here)

smarx007 5y ago

Been waiting for some practical uses since I read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26650493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26650493. I forgot to ask back then if someone had experience with Apache Camel, Spring Integration, or similar and could compare it to the crop of SaaS offerings like Fivetran (that Airbyte itself is taking on by providing an OSS offering).

Evidlo 5y ago

Was hoping for something about rapid prototyping of electrical connectors.

mtricot 5y ago
In the end, data is transported as electrical current so it is not completely off :)
therein 5y ago
Same, I was expecting some 3D printing, maybe some experimentation about how much spacing is needed between pins for insulation and how large the contact surfaces should be etc. I was excited.
afandian 5y ago
This is a fun story in that vein: http://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-an-obsolete-connector/ http://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-a...
- geoduck14 5y ago
  Low supply of DB 19 connectors? I'll bet this is why there are 10k Teslas that can't be delivered right now.
tmh88j 5y ago
That's what I was expecting as well. Guessing that "connector" an industry term that I'm just not aware of. Seems like some pre-made adapter patterns for ETL's from browsing the docs.
buildbot 5y ago
I actually would love a service that did this for something mortally/individually affordable.

dvaun 5y ago

This looks great. I’d love to throw up an instance locally and play with it at work, but that likely wouldn’t happen for a long time (local gov -> slow processes). That being said, I’ve got a fun project in mind which I may find a use case for this. I’ll give it a shot.

mtricot 5y ago
Thanks! let us know if we can help.

ducttapecrown 5y ago

What is a connector?

sherifnada 5y ago
It's a module which extracts data from a source (an API, database, etc..) or pushes data to a destination (warehouse, blob storage, API, etc..). They're ubiquitous in data engineering & analytics workflows where users often need to consolidate their data in one database or warehouse to build dashboards, run analyses, etc..
- tmh88j 5y ago
  I already responded to a different comment in this thread, but you seem to be knowledgable on the subject. Is this a tool to assist with ETL's between otherwise incompatible sources/destinations?
  - jeanlaf 5y ago
    Indeed! You could use the CDK to build the data integration pipelines that your ETL solution doesn't support. Airbyte comes also with ~70 connectors. So if we already support the destination you want, you can only build the source connector that we might not support as well. Our goal is support 200 connectors by the end of the year and address the long tail of integrations in 2022 :).

jeanlaf 5y ago

If you want to have a look at the open-source GitHub project, here's the link: https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte

vincentdm 5y ago

Cool! We built something similar for on-premise data sources, in Clojure. https://basil.net https://basil.net

ncmncm 5y ago

It took a substantial fraction of two hours for the page to load.

jeanlaf 5y ago
Interesting. Where are you located? Thanks!
- ncmncm 5y ago
  In New York. But the slow load (not really an hour, just felt like it) was probably Javascript overhead.