Under the Hood: Building MySQL Change Data Capture in ClickPipes

ClickPipes implements Change Data Capture (CDC) for MySQL databases, providing real-time data integration with ClickHouse. The system leverages MySQL's native replication capabilities and implements intelligent processing pipelines to balance reliability, performance, and ease of use. It supports both GTID-based and binlog position-based replication methods, handles various data types, and includes features like transaction batching, idle timeouts, parallelism, and backoff strategies for optimal performance. The system is designed to handle high-frequency transactions, large bulk operations, and realistic mixed workloads, with sub-30s latency under optimal conditions. However, it has some limitations, including schema changes, data type restrictions, replication requirements, and support for TRUNCATE operations.