Change Data Capture (CDC) of PostgreSQL table using Apache Flink®

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Change Data Capture (CDC) is a technique you can use to track row-level changes in database tables in response to create, update, and delete operations. In this article, we use CDC Connectors for Apache Flink®, which offer a set of source connectors for Apache Flink. The connectors integrate Debezium® as the engine to capture the data changes.

Flink supports to interpret Debezium JSON and Avro messages as INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE messages into Apache Flink SQL system.

This support is useful in many cases to:

  • Synchronize incremental data from databases to other systems
  • Audit logs
  • Build real-time materialized views on databases
  • View temporal join changing history of a database table

Now, let's learn how to monitor changes on PostgreSQL table using Flink-SQL CDC. The PostgreSQL CDC connector allows for reading snapshot data and incremental data from PostgreSQL database.

Prerequisites

Prepare PostgreSQL table & Client

  • Using a Linux virtual machine, install PostgreSQL client using below commands

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install postgresql-client
    
  • Install the certificate to connect to PostgreSQL server using SSL

    wget --no-check-certificate https://dl.cacerts.digicert.com/DigiCertGlobalRootCA.crt.pem

  • Connect to the server (replace host, username and database name accordingly)

    psql --host=flinkpostgres.postgres.database.azure.com --port=5432 --username=admin --dbname=postgres --set=sslmode=require --set=sslrootcert=DigiCertGlobalRootCA.crt.pem
    
  • After connecting to the database successfully, create a sample table

    CREATE TABLE shipments (
        shipment_id SERIAL NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
        order_id SERIAL NOT NULL,
        origin VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
        destination VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
        is_arrived BOOLEAN NOT NULL
      );
      ALTER SEQUENCE public.shipments_shipment_id_seq RESTART WITH 1001;
      ALTER TABLE public.shipments REPLICA IDENTITY FULL;
      INSERT INTO shipments
      VALUES (default,10001,'Beijing','Shanghai',false),
         (default,10002,'Hangzhou','Shanghai',false),
         (default,10003,'Shanghai','Hangzhou',false);
    
  • To enable CDC on PostgreSQL database, you're required to make the following changes.

    • WAL level must be changed to logical. This value can be changed in server parameters section on Azure portal.

      Screenshot showing how to enable-cdc-on-postgres-database.

    • User accessing the table must have 'REPLICATION' role added

      ALTER USER <username> WITH REPLICATION;

  • To create Flink PostgreSQL CDC table, download all the dependent jars. Use the pom.xml file with the following contents.

    <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0  http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
        <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
        <groupId>com.dep.download</groupId>
        <artifactId>dep-download</artifactId>
        <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
            <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.ververica/flink-sql-connector-sqlserver-cdc -->
        <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.ververica</groupId>
            <artifactId>flink-sql-connector-postgres-cdc</artifactId>
            <version>2.4.2</version>
        </dependency>
        </dependencies>
    </project>
    
  • Use maven command to download all the dependent jars

       mvn -DoutputDirectory=target -f pom.xml dependency:copy-dependencies -X
    

    Note

  • Once the dependent jars are downloaded start the Flink SQL client, with these jars to be imported into the session. Complete command as follows,

    /opt/flink-webssh/bin/sql-client.sh -j
    /opt/flink-webssh/target/flink-sql-connector-postgres-cdc-2.4.2.jar -j
    /opt/flink-webssh/target/slf4j-api-1.7.15.jar -j
    /opt/flink-webssh/target/hamcrest-2.1.jar -j
    /opt/flink-webssh/target/flink-shaded-guava-31.1-jre-17.0.jar-j
    /opt/flink-webssh/target/awaitility-4.0.1.jar -j
    /opt/flink-webssh/target/jsr308-all-1.1.2.jar
    

    These commands start the sql client with the dependencies as,

    user@sshnode-0 [ ~ ]$ bin/sql-client.sh -j flink-sql-connector-postgres-cdc-2.4.2.jar -j slf4j-api-1.7.15.jar -j hamcrest-2.1.jar -j flink-shaded-guava-31.1-jre-17.0.jar -j awaitility-4.0.1.jar -j jsr308-all-1.1.2.jar 
    
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       ______ _ _       _      _____  ____  _        _____ _ _            _  BETA   
      | ____| (_)     | |     / ____|/ __ \| |       / ____| (_)          | | 
      | |__ | |_ _ __ | | __ | (___ | |  | | |      | |    | |_ ___ _ __ | |_ 
      |  __| | | | '_ \| |/ /  \___ \| |  | | |     | |    | | |/ _ \ '_ \| __|
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      |_|   |_|_|_| |_|_|\_\ |_____/ \___\_\______| \_____|_|_|\___|_| |_|\__|
    
           Welcome! Enter 'HELP;' to list all available commands. 'QUIT;' to exit.
    
    Command history file path: /home/xcao/.flink-sql-history
    
    Flink SQL>
    
  • Create a Flink PostgreSQL CDC table using CDC connector

    CREATE TABLE shipments (
      shipment_id INT,
      order_id INT,
      origin STRING,
      destination STRING,
      is_arrived BOOLEAN,
      PRIMARY KEY (shipment_id) NOT ENFORCED
    ) WITH (
      'connector' = 'postgres-cdc',
      'hostname' = 'flinkpostgres.postgres.database.azure.com',
      'port' = '5432',
      'username' = 'username',
      'password' = 'password',
      'database-name' = 'postgres',
      'schema-name' = 'public',
      'table-name' = 'shipments',
      'decoding.plugin.name' = 'pgoutput',
      'slot.name' = 'flink'
    );
    

Validation

  • Run 'select *' command to monitor the changes.

    select * from shipments;

    Screenshot showing how to run-select-command.

Reference