Google BigQuery Sink Connector for Confluent Platform (Legacy)

The Kafka Connect Google BigQuery Sink connector is used to stream data into BigQuery tables. When streaming data from Apache Kafka® topics that have registered schemas, the sink connector can create BigQuery tables with the appropriate BigQuery table schema. The BigQuery table schema is based upon information in the Kafka schema for the topic.

It is important to note the following:

  • The BigQuery Sink V2 connector is not supported in Confluent Platform. It is only supported in Confluent Cloud.
  • Version 2.x.x of the Google BigQuery Sink connector for Confluent Platform is not backward compatible with 1.x.x versions. For more information, see the Upgrading to 2.x.x section.
  • Google BigQuery Sink connector for Confluent Platform (legacy) will remain supported until stated otherwise and should not be considered as End of Support (EoS).
  • If you want to use multiple connectors with a high number of tasks, ensure you review BigQuery rate limits.

Looking for the fully-managed Google BigQuery Sink Connector?

Check out the Google BigQuery Sink V2 Connector for Confluent Cloud and start ingesting data using the BigQuery Storage Write API.

Features

At least once delivery

This connector guarantees that records are delivered at least once from the Kafka topic.

Dead Letter Queue

This connector supports routing invalid records to the Dead Letter Queue (DLQ). This includes any records having a 400 code (invalid error message) from BigQuery. Note that DLQ routing does not work if allowSchemaUnionization is set to false and allowNewBigQueryFields and allowBigQueryRequiredFieldRelaxation are set to true (which is equivalent to setting autoUpdateSchemas to true in versions earlier than 2.0.0 of this connector) and the connector detects that the failure is due to schema mismatch. For information about accessing and using the DLQ, see Confluent Platform Dead Letter Queue.

Multiple tasks

The Google BigQuery Sink connector supports running one or more tasks. You can specify the number of tasks in the tasks.max configuration parameter. This can lead to performance gains when multiple files need to be parsed.

Insert operations and duplicate detection

The InsertAll API supports insert operations and tries to detect duplicates. For more information, see BigQuery troubleshooting.

Insertion of records one at a time

The connector uses the BigQuery insertAll streaming api which inserts records which are available immediately in the table for querying.

Streaming from a list of topics

The connector supports streaming from a list of topics into corresponding tables in BigQuery.

Internal thread pool

Even though the BigQuery connector streams records one at a time by default (as opposed to running in batch mode), the connector is scalable because it contains an internal thread pool that allows it to stream records in parallel. Note that the internal thread pool defaults to 10 threads, which is configurable.

Limitations

The BigQuery Sink connector has the following limitations:

  • The connector does not support schemas with recursion.
  • The connector does not support schemas having float fields with NaN or +Infinity values.
  • Auto schema update does not support removing columns.
  • Auto schema update does not support recursive schemas.

  • When the connector is configured with upsertEnabled or deleteEnabled, it does not support Single Message Transformations (SMTs) that modify the topic name. Additionally, the following transformations are not allowed:

    • io.debezium.transforms.ByLogicalTableRouter
    • io.debezium.transforms.outbox.EventRouter
    • org.apache.kafka.connect.transforms.RegexRouter
    • org.apache.kafka.connect.transforms.TimestampRouter
    • io.confluent.connect.transforms.MessageTimestampRouter
    • io.confluent.connect.transforms.ExtractTopic$Key
    • io.confluent.connect.transforms.ExtractTopic$Value

    Note

    When the connector is not configured with upsertEnabled or deleteEnabled, these SMTs can be used without any issue.

Supported data types

The following list contains the supported BigQuery data types and the associated connector mapping. Note that this mapping applies when the connector creates a table automatically or updates schemas (that is, if either auto.create.tables or auto.update.schemas is set to true).

BigQuery Data Type Connector Mapping
STRING String
INTEGER INT8
INTEGER INT16
INTEGER INT32
INTEGER INT64
FLOAT FLOAT32
FLOAT FLOAT64
BOOLEAN Boolean
BYTES Bytes
TIMESTAMP Logical TIMESTAMP
TIME Logical TIME
DATE Logical DATE
FLOAT Logical Decimal
DATE Debezium Date
TIME Debezium MicroTime
TIME Debezium Time
TIMESTAMP Debezium MicroTimestamp
TIMESTAMP Debezium TIMESTAMP
TIMESTAMP Debezium ZonedTimestamp

Install the BigQuery connector

You can install this connector by using the confluent connect plugin install command, or by manually downloading the ZIP file.

Prerequisites

  • You must install the connector on every machine where Connect will run.
  • If you want to install the connector using Confluent Hub, you must install the Confluent Hub Client. This is installed by default with Confluent Enterprise.
  • Kafka Broker: Confluent Platform 3.3.0 or later, or Kafka 0.11.0 or later
  • Connect: Confluent Platform 3.3.0 or later, or Kafka 0.11.0 or later
  • Java 1.8
  • Active Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account with authorization to create resources

Important

Streaming into BigQuery is not available with the Google Cloud free tier. If you try to use streaming without enabling billing, you receive the following error: BigQuery: Streaming insert is not allowed in the free tier.. For more details, see Streaming data into BigQuery.

Install the connector using the Confluent CLI

To install the latest connector version using Confluent Hub Client, navigate to your Confluent Platform installation directory and run the following command:

confluent connect plugin install wepay/kafka-connect-bigquery:latest

You can install a specific version by replacing latest with a version number as shown in the following example:

confluent connect plugin install wepay/kafka-connect-bigquery:2.6.0

Install the connector manually

Download and extract the ZIP file for your connector and then follow the manual connector installation instructions.

License

The Google Cloud BigQuery Sink Connector is an open source connector and does not require a Confluent Enterprise License.

Configuration properties

For a complete list of configuration properties for this connector, see Configuration Reference for Google BigQuery Sink Connector for Confluent Platform (Legacy).

Upgrading to 2.x.x

The following changes aren’t backward compatible in the BigQuery connector:

  • datasets was removed and defaultDataset has been introduced. The connector now infers the dataset from the topic name if the topic is in the form <dataset>:<tableName>. If the topic name is in the form <tablename>, the connector defaults to defaultDataset.

  • topicsToTables was removed. You should use SMT RegexRouter to route topics to tables.

  • autoUpdateSchemas was replaced by allowNewBigQueryFields and allowBigQueryRequiredFieldRelaxation.

  • value.converter.enhanced.avro.schema.support should be set to false or removed. If this property is not removed or set to false, you may receive the following error:

    Invalid field name
"com.examples.project-super-important.v1.MyData". Fields must
contain only letters, numbers, and underscores, start with a letter or
underscore, and be at most 300 characters long.

Quick start

The Confluent BigQuery Sink connector can stream table records into BigQuery from Kafka topics. These records are streamed at high throughput rates to facilitate analytical queries in near real-time.

For an example of how to get Kafka Connect connected to Confluent Cloud, see Connect Self-Managed Kafka Connect to Confluent Cloud.

Install the connector

To install the BiqQuery connector, complete the following steps. Note that to run the following steps, you must have Confluent Platform running locally.

  1. Navigate to your Confluent Platform installation directory and enter the following command:

    confluent connect plugin install wepay/kafka-connect-bigquery:latest

  2. Use the Confluent CLI to restart Connect as adding a new connector plugin requires restarting Kafka Connect.

Tip

The command syntax for the Confluent CLI development commands changed in 5.3.0. These commands have been moved to confluent local. For example, the syntax for confluent start is now confluent local services start. For more information, see confluent local.

confluent local services connect stop && confluent local services connect start
Using CONFLUENT_CURRENT: /Users/username/Sandbox/confluent-snapshots/var/confluent.NuZHxXfq
Starting Zookeeper
Zookeeper is [UP]
Starting Kafka
Kafka is [UP]
Starting Schema Registry
Schema Registry is [UP]
Starting Kafka REST
Kafka REST is [UP]
Starting Connect
Connect is [UP]

  1. Verify the BigQuery Sink Connector plugin has been installed correctly and recognized by the plugin loader:

    curl -sS localhost:8083/connector-plugins | jq .[].class | grep BigQuerySinkConnector
"com.wepay.kafka.connect.bigqueryl.BigQuerySinkConnector"

Set up the Google Cloud BigQuery connector

Use the topics in this section to set up the BigQuery Sink connector for Confluent Platform.

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites are required before setting up the BigQuery connector.

  • An active Google Cloud account with authorization to create resources.

  • A BigQuery project. You can create the project using the Google Cloud Console.

  • A BigQuery dataset in the project.

  • A service account that can access the BigQuery project containing the dataset. You can create this service account in the Google Cloud Console.

  • The service account must have access to the BigQuery project containing the dataset. You create and download a key when creating a service account. You must download the key as a JSON file as shown in the following example:

      {
     "type": "service_account",
     "project_id": "confluent-842583",
     "private_key_id": "...omitted...",
     "private_key": "-----BEGIN PRIVATE ...omitted... =\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n",
     "client_email": "confluent2@confluent-842583.iam.gserviceaccount.com",
     "client_id": "...omitted...",
     "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/oauth2/auth",
     "token_uri": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token",
     "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/certs",
     "client_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/robot/metadata/confluent2%40confluent-842583.iam.gserviceaccount.com"
  }

According to `GCP specifications
<https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/access-control>`__, the service
account will either need the **BigQueryEditor** primitive IAM role or the
**bigquery.dataEditor** predefined IAM role. The minimum permissions are as
follows:

.. code-block:: text

   bigquery.datasets.get
   bigquery.tables.create
   bigquery.tables.get
   bigquery.tables.getData
   bigquery.tables.list
   bigquery.tables.update
   bigquery.tables.updateData

Start the BigQuery Sink connector

To start the BigQuery Sink Connector, complete the following steps:

  1. Create the file register-kcbd-connect-bigquery.json to store the connector configuration.

    Connect Distributed REST quick start connector properties:

    {
      "name": "kcbq-connect1",
      "config": {
      "connector.class": "com.wepay.kafka.connect.bigquery.BigQuerySinkConnector",
      "tasks.max" : "1",
      "topics" : "kcbq-quickstart1",
      "sanitizeTopics" : "true",
      "autoCreateTables" : "true",
      "allowNewBigQueryFields" : "true",
      "allowBigQueryRequiredFieldRelaxation" : "true",
      "schemaRetriever" : "com.wepay.kafka.connect.bigquery.retrieve.IdentitySchemaRetriever",
      "project" : "confluent-243016",
      "defaultDataset" : "ConfluentDataSet",
      "keyfile" : " /Users/titomccutcheon/dev/confluent_fork/kafka-connect-bigquery/kcbq-connector/quickstart/properties/confluent-243016-384a24e2de1a.json",
      "transforms" : "RegexTransformation",
      "transforms.RegexTransformation.type" : "org.apache.kafka.connect.transforms.RegexRouter",
      "transforms.RegexTransformation.regex" : "(kcbq_)(.*)",
      "transforms.RegexTransformation.replacement" : "$2"
    }
}
Note that the project key is the id value of the BigQuery project

in Google Cloud. For datasets, the value ConfluentDataSet is the ID of the dataset entered by the user during Google Cloud dataset creation.``keyfile`` is the service account key JSON file location.

If you don’t want this connector to create a BigQuery table automatically, create a BigQuery table with Partitioning: Partition by ingestion time and a proper schema.

Also, note that the properties prefixed with transforms are used to set up SMTs. The following is an example regex router SMT that strips kcbq_ from the topic name. Replace with relevant regex to replace the topic of each sink record with destination dataset and table name in the format <dataset>:<tableName> or only the destination table name in the format <tableName>

  1. Start the connector.

    curl -i -X POST -H "Accept:application/json" -H  "Content-Type:application/json" http://localhost:8083/connectors/ -d @register-kcbd-connect-bigquery.json

Start your Kafka producer

To start your Kafka producer, complete the following steps:

  1. Go to the Kafka bin folder and start a producer in a new terminal session.

  2. Type the following command which waits on terminal input.

    ./kafka-avro-console-producer --broker-list localhost:9092 --topic kcbq-quickstart1 --property value.schema='{"type":"record","name":"myrecord","fields":[{"name":"f1","type":"string"}]}'

  3. Enter text for two test records, and press Enter after typing each line.

    ./kafka-avro-console-producer --broker-list localhost:9092 --topic kcbq-quickstart1 --property value.schema='{"type":"record","name":"myrecord","fields":[{"name":"f1","type":"string"}]}'
{"f1":"Testing the Kafka-BigQuery Connector!"}
{"f1":"Testing the Kafka-BigQuery Connector for a second time!"}

Checking results in BigQuery

To the check the results in BigQuery, complete the following steps:

  1. Go to the BigQuery editor in Google Cloud.

  2. Enter the following SQL SELECT statement.

    SELECT * FROM ConfluentDataSet.quickstart1;

    Note

    ConfluentDataSet is the dataset ID and quickstart1 is the name of the BigQuery table taken from the Kafka topic. In this case, the SMT strips kcbq_ from the topic: the Connector converts this topic name kcbq_quickstart1 to table name quickstart1.

Clean up resources

To clean up resources in BiqQuery, complete the following steps:

  1. Delete the connector:

    curl -X DELETE localhost:8083/connectors/kcbq-connect1

  2. Stop Confluent services:

    confluent local stop

Partition features

To use timestamp partitioning by field name, you must set the bigQueryPartitionDecorator to false, and then set the timestampPartitionFieldName property to the field name that contains the partitioning timestamps (for example, timestampPartitionFieldName=f2). With the BigQuery console, you can use the following query to output a list of existing partitions:

SELECT f2 as pt, FORMAT_TIMESTAMP("%Y%m%d", f2) as partition_id
FROM `PROJECT_ID.DATASET_ID.TABLE_ID`
GROUP BY f2
ORDER BY f2

The output lists all rows that have different dates and an additional partition_id column. Records that have a timestamp within a day’s range will have the same partition_id.