Typing and Deduping

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This page refers to new functionality added by Destinations V2. Typing and deduping is the default method of transforming datasets within data warehouse and database destinations after they've been replicated. Please check each destination to learn if Typing and Deduping is supported.

What is Destinations V2?

Airbyte Destinations V2 provide:

• One-to-one table mapping: Data in one stream will always be mapped to one table in your data warehouse. No more sub-tables.
• Improved per-row error handling with _airbyte_meta: Airbyte will now populate typing errors in the _airbyte_meta column instead of failing your sync. You can query these results to audit misformatted or unexpected data.
• Internal Airbyte tables in the airbyte_internal schema: Airbyte will now generate all raw tables in the airbyte_internal schema. We no longer clutter your desired schema with raw data tables.
• Incremental delivery for large syncs: Data will be incrementally delivered to your final tables when possible. No more waiting hours to see the first rows in your destination table.

_airbyte_meta Errors

"Per-row error handling" is a new paradigm for Airbyte which provides greater flexibility for our users. Airbyte now separates data-moving problems from data-content problems. Prior to Destinations V2, both types of errors were handled the same way: by failing the sync. Now, a failing sync means that Airbyte could not move all of your data. You can query the _airbyte_meta column to see which rows failed for content reasons, and why. This is a more flexible approach, as you can now decide how to handle rows with errors on a case-by-case basis.

tip

When using data downstream from Airbyte, we generally recommend you only include rows which do not have an error, e.g:

-- postgres syntax
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM _table_ WHERE json_array_length(_airbyte_meta ->> errors) = 0

The types of errors which will be stored in _airbyte_meta.errors include:

• Typing errors: the source declared that the type of the column id should be an integer, but a string value was returned.
• Size errors (coming soon): the source returned content which cannot be stored within this this row or column (e.g. a Redshift Super column has a 16mb limit). Destinations V2 will allow us to trim records which cannot fit into destinations, but retain the primary key(s) and cursors and include "too big" error messages.

Depending on your use-case, it may still be valuable to consider rows with errors, especially for aggregations. For example, you may have a table user_reviews, and you would like to know the count of new reviews received today. You can choose to include reviews regardless of whether your data warehouse had difficulty storing the full contents of the message column. For this use case, SELECT COUNT(*) from user_reviews WHERE DATE(created_at) = DATE(NOW()) is still valid.

Destinations V2 Example

Consider the following source schema for stream users:

{
  "id": "number",
  "first_name": "string",
  "age": "number",
  "address": {
    "city": "string",
    "zip": "string"
  }
}

The data from one stream will now be mapped to one table in your schema as below:

Final Destination Table Name: public.users

(note, not in actual table)	_airbyte_raw_id	_airbyte_extracted_at	_airbyte_meta	id	first_name	age	address
Successful typing and de-duping ⟶	xxx-xxx-xxx	2022-01-01 12:00:00	{}	1	sarah	39	{ city: “San Francisco”, zip: “94131” }
Failed typing that didn’t break other rows ⟶	yyy-yyy-yyy	2022-01-01 12:00:00	{ errors: {[“fish” is not a valid integer for column “age”]}	2	evan	NULL	{ city: “Menlo Park”, zip: “94002” }
Not-yet-typed ⟶

In legacy normalization, columns of Airbyte type Object in the Destination were "unnested" into separate tables. In this example, with Destinations V2, the previously unnested public.users_address table with columns city and zip will no longer be generated.

Raw Destination Table Name: airbyte_internal.raw_public__users (airbyte_internal.raw_{namespace}__{stream})

(note, not in actual table)	_airbyte_raw_id	_airbyte_data	_airbyte_loaded_at	_airbyte_extracted_at
Successful typing and de-duping ⟶	xxx-xxx-xxx	{ id: 1, first_name: “sarah”, age: 39, address: { city: “San Francisco”, zip: “94131” } }	2022-01-01 12:00:001	2022-01-01 12:00:00
Failed typing that didn’t break other rows ⟶	yyy-yyy-yyy	{ id: 2, first_name: “evan”, age: “fish”, address: { city: “Menlo Park”, zip: “94002” } }	2022-01-01 12:00:001	2022-01-01 12:00:00
Not-yet-typed ⟶	zzz-zzz-zzz	{ id: 3, first_name: “edward”, age: 35, address: { city: “Sunnyvale”, zip: “94003” } }	NULL	2022-01-01 13:00:00

You also now see the following changes in Airbyte-provided columns:

Loading Data Incrementally to Final Tables

note

Typing and Deduping may cause an increase in your destination's compute cost. This cost will vary depending on the amount of data that is transformed and is not related to Airbyte credit usage. Enabling loading data incrementally to final tables may further increase this cost.

V2 destinations may include the option "Enable Loading Data Incrementally to Final Tables". When enabled your data will load into your final tables incrementally while your data is still being synced. When Disabled (the default), your data loads into your final tables once at the end of a sync. Note that this option only applies if you elect to create Final tables.