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Sources are the services and systems you extract your data from. A source is usually a service you’re already using in your organization, such as Salesforce or Facebook. However, sources can also be databases such as PostgreSQL or even files in cloud storage such as Amazon S3. The components that extract source data are commonly referred to as connectors as they connect to your data sources. Connectors are represented as individual components on ‘s canvas. Simply open an orchestration pipeline and add your desired connector onto the canvas. All connectors are available in orchestration pipelines and, for basic uses, orchestration pipelines can be thought of as pipelines that load your data into a data warehouse, ready for transformation. For each connector you’ll need to:
  • Connect: Add your connection details for the source system. This will involve authenticating to the service.
  • Configure: Select what data to extract.
  • Set up a destination: Provide a destination (typically a table in a data warehouse) to load the data into, ready for transformation.
You can connect to any data source that uses a REST API. Visit Connect to any source to review all the connectors Matillion offers, and how we can support you in creating your own custom connector. To use a connector, you typically need to complete an authentication process and role-based access control to ensure data security. Configuration settings vary depending on the type of connector and the data sources you wish to extract. Read Sampling output to learn about retrieving a sample of data from a component.

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Configuring connectors

When you add a connector to your pipeline, you need to define the extraction logic, such as specifying the tables, files, or API endpoints to retrieve data from. The connector handles the data retrieval process, making it seamless for you. Each connector component will load a single data source from the source system (a single system may have multiple sources within it—the component will let you choose) and so you can use multiple instances of the same connector to load multiple data sources. For example, Facebook might provide “ad campaign” data as one source and “likes” data as another source. The best way to understand connectors is with an example. Read our New user tutorial to learn more.