Data synchronization in Lakehouse

Data synchronization in Lakebase ensures that transactional data and analytical data remain up-to-date across the lakehouse and Postgres database without requiring complex ETL pipelines.

How It Works

Sync from Delta Lake: Lakebase allows automatic synchronization from Delta tables to Postgres tables, ensuring that data updates are reflected in real-time.

Managed Sync: Instead of manually moving data, Lakebase provides a fully managed synchronization process that continuously updates records.

Optional Secondary Indexes: Users can define indexes to optimize query performance on synchronized data.

Change Data Capture (CDC): Lakebase supports CDC, meaning it tracks inserts, updates, and deletes to maintain consistency.

Multi-Cloud Support: Synchronization works across different cloud environments, ensuring flexibility and scalability.

Key Benefits Eliminates ETL Complexity: No need for custom pipelines—data flows seamlessly.

Real-Time Updates: Ensures low-latency access to fresh data.

Optimized for AI & ML: Supports feature serving and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

Secure & Governed: Works with Unity Catalog for authentication and data governance.

While data synchronization and data replication are often used interchangeably, they have distinct differences:

Data Synchronization Ensures that two or more copies of data remain consistent and up-to-date.

Can involve incremental updates, meaning only changed data is transferred.

Often used in distributed systems where data needs to be continuously updated across multiple locations.

Example: Keeping a mobile app's local database in sync with a central cloud database.



Data Replication
Creates exact copies of data across multiple locations.
Typically involves bulk transfers, meaning entire datasets are copied.
Used for backup, disaster recovery, and load balancing.

Example:A read replica of a database used to distribute query load.

Key Differences
Synchronization focuses on keeping data updated across systems, while replication ensures identical copies exist.
Synchronization can be real-time or scheduled, whereas replication is often one-time or periodic.
Synchronization is more dynamic, while replication is more static.