Understanding Change Data Capture (CDC): Definition, Methods and Benefits

Change Data Capture (CDC) is a software architecture that detects and captures changes made to data in a database, sending these changes to downstream processes or systems. It records INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE transactions applied to a table, allowing for efficient data replication and near real-time analytics. CDC can be more efficient than traditional batch processing methods, as it only considers data that has changed since the last replication. Log-based CDC is a popular implementation method, using database transaction logs to identify changes with minimal impact on source databases. Airbyte is an open-source data integration platform that supports log-based CDC from various sources and can help manage the heavy lifting involved in implementing CDC in a production data stack.