Engineering

Change Data Capture (CDC) Tutorial: Get Started in Minutes

Streamkap Team

Streamkap Team

December 15, 2024

TL;DR

CDC captures database changes in real-time, enabling low-latency data synchronization without impacting source database performance.

What is Change Data Capture?

Change Data Capture (CDC) is a set of software design patterns used to determine and track data that has changed in a database. Instead of periodically querying for all data, CDC captures only the changes (inserts, updates, deletes) as they happen.

Why Use CDC?

Traditional batch ETL processes have several limitations:

  • High latency - Data can be hours or days old

  • Database load - Full table scans put strain on source databases

  • Missed changes - Updates between batch runs can be lost

CDC solves these problems by:

1. Capturing changes in real-time as they occur

Minimizing database impact by reading transaction logs 3.

Ensuring data completeness with ordered, exactly-once delivery

How Streamkap Implements CDC

Streamkap uses Debezium connectors to read database transaction logs (WAL for PostgreSQL, binlog for MySQL) and stream changes to your destinations in real-time.

Supported Sources

  • PostgreSQL

  • MySQL

  • MongoDB

  • SQL Server

  • Oracle

Supported Destinations

  • Snowflake

  • Databricks

  • ClickHouse

  • BigQuery

  • Kafka

Getting Started

1. Sign up for a free Streamkap account

2. Connect your source database

3. Configure your destination data warehouse

4. Start streaming in minutes

Ready to get started? Sign up for free and start syncing your data in real-time.

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