TiDB setup

Vendor-supported plugin

Some core functionality may be limited. If you're interested in contributing, check out the source code repository listed below.

• Maintained by: PingCAP
• Authors: Xiang Zhang, Qiang Wu, Yuhang Shi
• GitHub repo: pingcap/dbt-tidb
• PyPI package: dbt-tidb
• Slack channel: #db-tidb
• Supported dbt Core version: v1.0.0 and newer
• dbt Cloud support: Not Supported
• Minimum data platform version: n/a

Installing dbt-tidb

Use pip to install the adapter. Before 1.8, installing the adapter would automatically install dbt-core and any additional dependencies. Beginning in 1.8, installing an adapter does not automatically install dbt-core. This is because adapters and dbt Core versions have been decoupled from each other so we no longer want to overwrite existing dbt-core installations. Use the following command for installation:

Configuring dbt-tidb

For TiDB-specific configuration, please refer to TiDB configs.

Connecting to TiDB with dbt-tidb

User / Password Authentication

Configure your dbt profile for using TiDB:

TiDB connection profile

profiles.yml

dbt-tidb:
  target: dev
  outputs:
    dev:
      type: tidb
      server: 127.0.0.1
      port: 4000
      schema: database_name
      username: tidb_username
      password: tidb_password

      # optional
      retries: 3 # default 1

Description of Profile Fields

Option	Description	Required?	Example
type	The specific adapter to use	Required	tidb
server	The server (hostname) to connect to	Required	yourorg.tidb.com
port	The port to use	Required	4000
schema	Specify the schema (database) to build models into	Required	analytics
username	The username to use to connect to the server	Required	dbt_admin
password	The password to use for authenticating to the server	Required	awesome_password
retries	The retry times after an unsuccessful connection	Optional	default 1

Database User Privileges

Your database user would be able to have some abilities to read or write, such as SELECT, CREATE, and so on. You can find some help here with TiDB privileges management.

Required Privilege
SELECT
CREATE
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE
CREATE VIEW
INSERT
DROP
SHOW DATABASE
SHOW VIEW
SUPER

Supported features

TiDB 4.X	TiDB 5.0 ~ 5.2	TiDB >= 5.3	Feature
✅	✅	✅	Table materialization
✅	✅	✅	View materialization
❌	❌	✅	Incremental materialization
❌	✅	✅	Ephemeral materialization
✅	✅	✅	Seeds
✅	✅	✅	Sources
✅	✅	✅	Custom data tests
✅	✅	✅	Docs generate
❌	❌	✅	Snapshots
✅	✅	✅	Grant
✅	✅	✅	Connection retry

Note:

• TiDB 4.0 ~ 5.0 does not support CTE, you should avoid using WITH in your SQL code.
• TiDB 4.0 ~ 5.2 does not support creating a temporary table or view.
• TiDB 4.X does not support using SQL func in CREATE VIEW, avoid it in your SQL code. You can find more detail here.