How to set up Real-time Streaming Bulk Data Loading from Kafka to ClickHouse?

Introduction

Setting up real-time streaming bulk data loading from Kafka to ClickHouse involves several steps:

  1. Install and configure Kafka: Install and configure Apache Kafka on a cluster of machines. This will allow you to produce and consume data streams in real-time.
  2. Install and configure ClickHouse: Install and configure ClickHouse on a separate machine or cluster of machines. This will be the destination for the data streams produced by Kafka.
  3. Create a Kafka table in ClickHouse: Create a Kafka table in ClickHouse using the CREATE TABLE command. The table should have the same schema as the data streams produced by Kafka.
  4. Configure Kafka engine in ClickHouse: Configure the Kafka engine in ClickHouse using the CREATE ENGINE command. This will allow ClickHouse to consume data streams from Kafka.
  5. Configure Kafka consumer in ClickHouse: Configure the Kafka consumer in ClickHouse using the CREATE CONSUMER command. This will allow ClickHouse to consume data streams from a specific Kafka topic.
  6. Start Kafka consumer: Start the Kafka consumer in ClickHouse using the START CONSUMER command. This will start consuming data streams from the specified Kafka topic.
  7. Verify data loading: Verify that data is being loaded into ClickHouse by running a SELECT query on the Kafka table.

Creating a Kafka table in ClickHouse

Here is an example of how you could create a Kafka table in ClickHouse, configure the Kafka engine and consumer, and start the consumer to begin loading data:

# Create a Kafka table in ClickHouse
CREATE TABLE my_kafka_table (
    timestamp DateTime,
    event_type String,
    event_data String
) ENGINE = Kafka(
    'kafka_host:9092', # Kafka broker host and port
    'my_topic',       # kafka topic name
    'my_kafka_table', # name of the ClickHouse table
    '',               # consumer group
    '',               # format
    'timestamp'       # timestamp field
);

# Configure Kafka consumer
CREATE CONSUMER my_kafka_consumer FOR my_kafka_table;

# Start Kafka consumer
START CONSUMER my_kafka_consumer;

Conclusion

It’s worth noting that this is just a basic example and you’ll need to adapt it to your specific needs. It’s important to consider how to handle failures, what is the data format, how to handle failures and how to handle the data validation for your specific use case.

To know more about Clickhouse and Kafka, please do consider reading the below articles: 

About Shiv Iyer 237 Articles
Open Source Database Systems Engineer with a deep understanding of Optimizer Internals, Performance Engineering, Scalability and Data SRE. Shiv currently is the Founder, Investor, Board Member and CEO of multiple Database Systems Infrastructure Operations companies in the Transaction Processing Computing and ColumnStores ecosystem. He is also a frequent speaker in open source software conferences globally.