Skip to main content

Tutorial

Load and validate, in one shot or incrementally, JSON, XML and CSV files into your datawarehouse using different write strategies.

Prerequisites

If you skipped the extract step above, copy the folder and its files present in $SL_ROOT/sample-data/ to the $SL_ROOT/incoming/ folder.

The folder name starbake will be translated in to a schema name (dataset in BigQuery) in the datawarehouse.

The files in the folder will be loaded into tables in the schema. Files will be loaded into tables with the same name in the schema. Tables suffixed by a date/time will be loaded incrementally.

Autoload

The autoload command is used to load the files in the default incoming folder into the datawarehouse.

The autoload command will:

  • detect the file type based on its extension and content
  • infer the schema of the target table
  • stage the files
  • load the files into the target tables

Run the following command to autoload the files located the incoming folder.

starlake autoload
note

Starlake looks at files present in the $SL_ROOT/incoming folder.

The default incoming folder may be changed by setting the SL_INCOMING environment variable.

Once loaded, files are moved to the $SL_ROOT/datasets/archive folder if the SL_ARCHIVE environment variable is set to true (default). You can replay them by moving them back to the incoming folder.

Query your datawarehouse

That's it you have loaded the data into your datawarehouse and just need to query it. To query your database, open de DuckDB shell by running the following command:

note

Install duckdb if you haven't done it yet.

$ cd $SL_ROOT
$ duckdb datasets/duckdb.db
v0.10.0 20b1486d11
Enter ".help" for usage hints.

You can now query your datawarehouse using SQL.

D show;
┌──────────┬──────────┬─────────────────┬──────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────┐
│ database │ schema │ name │ column_names │ column_types │ temporary │
│ varchar │ varchar │ varchar │ varchar[] │ varchar[] │ boolean │
├──────────┼──────────┼─────────────────┼──────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────┤
│ duckdb │ audit │ audit │ [JOBID, PATHS, DOM… │ [VARCHAR, VARCHAR, VARCHAR, VARCHAR, BOOLEAN, BIGINT, BIGINT, BIGINT, TIMESTAMP, INTEGER, VARCH… │ false │
│ duckdb │ audit │ rejected │ [JOBID, TIMESTAMP,… │ [VARCHAR, TIMESTAMP, VARCHAR, VARCHAR, VARCHAR, VARCHAR] │ false │
│ duckdb │ starbake │ order │ [customer_id, orde… │ [BIGINT, BIGINT, VARCHAR, TIMESTAMP] │ false │
│ duckdb │ starbake │ order_line │ [order_id, product… │ [BIGINT, BIGINT, BIGINT, DOUBLE] │ false │
│ duckdb │ starbake │ product │ [category, cost, d… │ [VARCHAR, DOUBLE, VARCHAR, VARCHAR, DOUBLE, BIGINT] │ false │
└──────────┴──────────┴─────────────────┴──────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────┘

D select * from starbake.order limit 5;
┌─────────────┬──────────┬───────────┬─────────────────────────┐
│ customer_id │ order_id │ status │ timestamp │
│ int64 │ int64 │ varchar │ timestamp │
├─────────────┼──────────┼───────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ 6 │ 1 │ Cancelled │ 2024-02-05 22:19:15.454 │
│ 23 │ 2 │ Delivered │ 2024-01-02 11:44:37.59 │
│ 20 │ 3 │ Delivered │ 2024-02-10 23:10:30.685 │
│ 6 │ 4 │ Delivered │ 2024-01-17 19:31:22.917 │
│ 17 │ 5 │ Pending │ 2024-01-19 01:26:06.674 │
└─────────────┴──────────┴───────────┴─────────────────────────┘

To exit the DuckDB shell, type .quit and press Enter.

D .quit
$

Manual load

The autoload command above is a shortcut to the infer-schema, stage and load commands below.

Infer schema

This is done by running the following command:

starlake infer-schema --input-path incoming/starbake --clean

Your metadata load folder should now contain the folder starbake with following files:

  • products.sl.yml
  • orders.sl.yml
  • order_lines.yml
  • _config.sl.yml

The ìnfer-schema` command has created a schema file for each of the files in the incoming folder trying to detect the schema of the files. These schema files are used to load the data into the datawarehouse.

In a real life scenario, you may want to review the schema files and adjust them to your needs.

Stage before loading

starlake can stage the files before loading them into the datawarehouse. This is useful when your files arrive in a different folder from the one where they are loaded into the datawarehouse.

To move the incoming files to the stage folder. Run the following command:

starlake stage

Load data into your datawarehouse

Run the following command to load the files in the incoming folder. Since we are target the DuckDB datawarehouse, we need to set the SL_ENV variable to DUCKDB to activate the env.DUCKDB.sl.yml configuration file.


SL_ENV=DUCKDB starlake load

Query your loaded files in your datawarehouse

That's it you have loaded the data into your datawarehouse and just need to query it. To query your database, you can use the following command:

$ cd $SL_ROOT
$ duckdb datasets/duckdb.db
v0.10.0 20b1486d11
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
D show;
┌──────────┬──────────┬─────────────────┬──────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────┐
│ database │ schema │ name │ column_names │ column_types │ temporary │
│ varchar │ varchar │ varchar │ varchar[] │ varchar[] │ boolean │
├──────────┼──────────┼─────────────────┼──────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────┤
│ duckdb │ audit │ audit │ [JOBID, PATHS, DOM… │ [VARCHAR, VARCHAR, VARCHAR, VARCHAR, BOOLEAN, BIGINT, BIGINT, BIGINT, TIMESTAMP, INTEGER, VARCH… │ false │
│ duckdb │ audit │ rejected │ [JOBID, TIMESTAMP,… │ [VARCHAR, TIMESTAMP, VARCHAR, VARCHAR, VARCHAR, VARCHAR] │ false │
│ duckdb │ starbake │ order │ [customer_id, orde… │ [BIGINT, BIGINT, VARCHAR, TIMESTAMP] │ false │
│ duckdb │ starbake │ order_line │ [order_id, product… │ [BIGINT, BIGINT, BIGINT, DOUBLE] │ false │
│ duckdb │ starbake │ product │ [category, cost, d… │ [VARCHAR, DOUBLE, VARCHAR, VARCHAR, DOUBLE, BIGINT] │ false │
└──────────┴──────────┴─────────────────┴──────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────┘

D select * from starbake.order limit 5;
┌─────────────┬──────────┬───────────┬─────────────────────────┐
│ customer_id │ order_id │ status │ timestamp │
│ int64 │ int64 │ varchar │ timestamp │
├─────────────┼──────────┼───────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ 6 │ 1 │ Cancelled │ 2024-02-05 22:19:15.454 │
│ 23 │ 2 │ Delivered │ 2024-01-02 11:44:37.59 │
│ 20 │ 3 │ Delivered │ 2024-02-10 23:10:30.685 │
│ 6 │ 4 │ Delivered │ 2024-01-17 19:31:22.917 │
│ 17 │ 5 │ Pending │ 2024-01-19 01:26:06.674 │
└─────────────┴──────────┴───────────┴─────────────────────────┘

D .quit
$

Our raw files have been loaded into the datawarehouse and we can now start to transform our data to build insights.