Work with data

When your data is in Tinybird, you can process it and explore it in different ways.

This is an experimental version of Tinybird. Join #forward in our Slack community to share your feedback.

Process and copy data

Tinybird provides several ways to process and copy data between data sources:

  • Pipes are a way to query and transform data. You can read data from a data source, apply transformations, and use the result from another pipe, like an endpoint. Pipes can be specialized into endpoints, materialized views, copy pipes, and so on.

  • Copy pipes capture the result of a pipe at a specific point in time and write it to a target data source. They can run on a schedule or run on demand, making them ideal for event-sourced snapshots, data experimentation, and deduplication with snapshots.

  • Materialized views continuously re-evaluate a query as new events are inserted, maintaining an always up-to-date derived dataset. Unlike copy pipes which create point-in-time snapshots, materialized views provide real-time transformations of your data.

Each approach has its own strengths and use cases:

  • Use pipes when you need to query and transform data.
  • Use copy pipes when you need scheduled or on-demand snapshots of your data.
  • Use materialized views when you need continuous, real-time transformations.

Lineage

Lineage visualizes how your data sources, endpoints, materialized views, and pipes connect and relate to each other.

You can select an item to see its details in the side panel.

Playgrounds

Playgrounds are sandbox environments where you can test your queries using ingested data. For example, you can use playgrounds to quickly query real-time production data, debug existing queries, or prototype new pipes.

You can download any playground by selecting Download. You can then add the .pipe file to your project.

Next steps