Sinks
Overview
Sinks are the inverse of sources and represent a connection to an external stream where Materialize outputs data. You can sink data from a materialized view, a source, or a table.
Sink methods
To create a sink, you can:
| Method | External system | Guide(s) or Example(s) |
|---|---|---|
Use COPY TO command
|
Amazon S3 or S3-compatible storage | |
| Use Census as an intermediate step | Census supported destinations | |
Use COPY TO S3 or S3-compatible storage as an intermediate step
|
Snowflake and other systems that can read from S3 | |
| Use a native connector | Kafka/Redpanda | |
Use SUBSCRIBE
|
Various |
Clusters and sinks
Avoid putting sinks on the same cluster that hosts sources.
See also Operational guidelines.
Hydration considerations
During creation, Kafka sinks need to load an entire snapshot of the data in memory.