Supabase Pipelines uses Postgres logical replication to replicate database changes to external destinations like BigQuery. Changes are captured from the Write Ahead Log and delivered in near real time to analytical systems.
Key benefits
- Near real-time sync: Changes replicated as they occur using WAL reading.
- BigQuery integration: Direct replication to Google's data warehouse.
- Managed pipeline: Monitor status, lag, and errors in dashboard.
- Complete change capture: INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and TRUNCATE operations.
- Production isolation: Keep analytical workloads away from your primary database.
Destinations
BigQuery creates views backed by versioned tables for efficient querying. Additional managed destinations are being evaluated as Pipelines develops.
Setup
Create Postgres publication for tables to replicate. Add destination in Replication section of dashboard. Configure destination-specific settings. Monitor pipeline in dashboard.
Requirements
Tables must have primary keys. Logical replication must be enabled.
Replication is valuable for:
- Real-time data warehousing
- Analytics separation from production
- Historical data archival
- Multi-destination data sync
- Compliance and audit trails
Limitations
No DDL support yet (ALTER TABLE, ADD COLUMN). Destination-specific constraints may apply.
Pipelines provides the real-time data pipeline required for modern analytics architectures.