Exporting data from mysql RDS for import into questDb

I've got a big table (~500m rows) in mysql RDS and I need to export specific columns from it to csv, to enable import into questDb.

Normally I'd use into outfile but this isn't supported on RDS as there is no access to the file system.

I've tried using workbench to do the export but due to size of the table, I keep getting out-of-memory issues.

Solution

Finally figured it out with help from this: Exporting a table from Amazon RDS into a CSV file

This solution works well as long as you have a sequential column of some kind, e.g. an auto incrementing integer PK or a date column. Make sure you have your date column indexed if you have a lot of data!

#!bin/bash

# Maximum number of rows to export/total rows in table, set a bit higher if live data being written
MAX=500000000
# Size of each export batch
STEP=1000000

mkdir -p parts

for (( c=0; c<= $MAX; c = c + $STEP ))
do
   mysql --port 3306 --protocol=TCP -h <rdshostname> -u <username> -p<password> --quick --database=<db> -e "select column1, column2, column3 <table> order by <timestamp> ASC limit $STEP offset $c" | sed 's/\t/","/g;s/^/"/;s/$/"/;s/\n//g' > export$c.csv

   # split down in to chunks under questdbs 65k line limit
   split -d -l 64999 --additional-suffix=.csv $FILE_NAME.csv ./parts/$FILE_NAME

done

# print out import statements to a file
for i in $(ls -v ./parts); do echo "COPY reading from '$i';" >> import.sql; done;

A slightly different approach which may be faster depending on indexing you have in place is step through the data month by month:

#!bin/bash
START_YEAR=2020
END_YEAR=2022

mkdir -p parts

for (( YEAR=$START_YEAR; YEAR<=$END_YEAR; YEAR++ ))
do
   for (( MONTH=1; MONTH<=12; MONTH++ ))
   do

      NEXT_MONTH=1
      let NEXT_YEAR=$YEAR+1
      if [ $MONTH -lt 12 ]
      then
         let NEXT_MONTH=$MONTH+1
         NEXT_YEAR=$YEAR
      fi

      FILE_NAME="export-$YEAR-$MONTH-to-$NEXT_YEAR-$NEXT_MONTH"

      mysql --port 3306 --protocol=TCP -h <rdshost> -u app -p<password> --quick --database=<database> -e "select <column1>, <column2>, round(UNIX_TIMESTAMP(<dateColumn>)) * 1000000 as date from <table> where <table>.<dateColumn> >= '$YEAR-$MONTH-01 00:00:00' and table.<dateColumn> < '$NEXT_YEAR-$NEXT_MONTH-01 00:00:00' order by <table>.<dateColumn> ASC" | sed 's/\t/","/g;s/^/"/;s/$/"/;s/\n//g' > $FILE_NAME.csv

      # split down in to chunks under questdbs 65k line limit
      split -d -l 64999 --additional-suffix=.csv $FILE_NAME.csv ./parts/$FILE_NAME
   done
done

# print out import statements to a file
for i in $(ls -v ./parts); do echo "COPY reading from '$i';" >> import.sql; done;

The above scripts will output a import.sql containing all the sql statements you need to import your data. See: https://questdb.io/docs/guides/importing-data/