Redshift

Overview

Hightouch lets you pull data stored in your Amazon Redshift data warehouse and push it to downstream destinations. Most of the setup occurs in the Hightouch UI, but you need access to Redshift for information like your host, port, database name, and credentials.

You may need to allowlist Hightouch’s IP addresses to let our systems connect to your Redshift cluster. Reference our networking docs to determine which IP addresses you need to allowlist.You can also securely connect to your Redshift cluster using AWS PrivateLink. AWS PrivateLink is a Business Tier feature.

Connection configuration

To get started, go to the Sources overview page and click the Add source button. Select Amazon Redshift and follow the steps below.

Choose connection type

Hightouch can connect directly to Redshift over the public internet or via an SSH tunnel. Since data is encrypted in transit via TLS, a direct connection is suitable for most use cases. You may need to set up a tunnel if your Redshift instance is on a private network or virtual private cloud (VPC).

Hightouch supports both standard and reverse SSH tunnels. To learn more about SSH tunneling, refer to Hightouch’s tunneling documentation.

Configure your source

Enter the following required fields into Hightouch:

Host: The hostname or IP address of your Redshift cluster. The hostname can be found by visiting the Redshift web console, navigating to the Clusters panel, and clicking your cluster. Copy the Endpoint string, excluding the port and database name.
Port: The port number of your Redshift cluster. The default is 5439, but yours may be different. To confirm, visit the Redshift web console, navigate to the Clusters panel, and click your cluster. The port number is shown in the Properties tab.
Database: The name of the database in your Redshift cluster. Most clusters have only one database. Visit the Redshift web console, navigate to the Clusters panel, and click your cluster. The database name is shown in the Properties tab.

Choose your sync engine

For optimal performance, Hightouch tracks incremental changes in your data model—such as added, changed, or removed rows—and only syncs those records. You can choose between two different sync engines for this work. The Basic engine requires read-only access to Redshift. Hightouch executes a query in your database, reads all query results, and then determines incremental changes using Hightouch’s infrastructure. This engine is easier to set up since it requires read—not write—access to Redshift. The Lightning engine requires read and write access to Redshift. The engine stores previously synced data in a separate schema in Redshift managed by Hightouch. In other words, the engine uses Redshift to track incremental changes to your data rather than performing these calculations in Hightouch. Therefore, these computations are completed more quickly.

Hightouch recommends using the Lightning sync engine when syncing more than 100,000 rows of data.

If you select the Basic engine, you can switch to the Lightning engine later. Once you’ve configured the Lightning engine, you can’t move back to the Basic engine without recreating Redshift as a source. To learn more, including migration steps and tips, check out the Lightning sync engine docs.

Basic versus Lightning engine comparison

The Lightning sync engine requires granting write access to your data warehouse, which makes its setup more involved than the Basic sync engine. However, it is more performant and reliable than the Basic engine. This makes it the ideal choice to guarantee faster syncs, especially with large data models. It also supports more features, such as Warehouse Sync Logs, Match Booster, and Identity Resolution.

Criteria	Basic sync engine	Lightning sync engine
Performance	Slower	Quicker
Ideal for large data models (over 100 thousand rows)	No	Yes
Reliability	Normal	High
Resilience to sync interruptions	Normal	High
Extra features	None	Warehouse Sync Logs, Match Booster, Identity Resolution
Ease of setup	Simpler	More involved
Location of change data capture	Hightouch infrastructure	Redshift schemas managed by Hightouch
Required permissions in Redshift	Read-only	Read and write
Ability to switch	You can move to the Lightning engine at any time	You can’t move to the Basic engine once Lightning is configured

Hightouch can use Warehouse Export with Redshift. Instead of streaming every row through Hightouch, it has Redshift write query results directly into Amazon S3, which Hightouch then reads. This speeds up syncs of large models. Warehouse Export runs automatically when your sync engine and storage support it, and Hightouch falls back to standard export when they don’t, so your syncs keep running either way.Redshift exports to Amazon S3 only, so your workspace storage must be S3.If Warehouse Export runs into a fixable configuration problem, such as a storage-integration or bucket-permission issue, Hightouch stops using it for the affected syncs so it isn’t retried on every run, and shows this on the sync and on this source’s configuration page. After you resolve the problem, re-enable Warehouse Export from an individual sync, or for all of this source’s syncs at once from the source configuration page, and Hightouch uses it again on the next run.A one-off problem on a single run, such as a row that exceeds the Warehouse Export size limit, isn’t treated as a configuration issue: that run falls back to standard export and says so on the run summary, and Hightouch automatically retries Warehouse Export on the next run.

Lightning engine setup

To set up the Lightning engine, you need to grant Hightouch write access to Redshift. You can do so by running the following SQL snippet.

CREATE USER hightouch_user WITH PASSWORD '********';
CREATE SCHEMA IF NOT EXISTS hightouch_audit;
CREATE SCHEMA IF NOT EXISTS hightouch_planner;
GRANT CREATE, USAGE ON SCHEMA hightouch_audit TO hightouch_user;
GRANT CREATE, USAGE ON SCHEMA hightouch_planner TO hightouch_user;

The snippet creates a dedicated Amazon Redshift user for Hightouch. It also provisions two schemas, hightouch_planner and hightouch_audit, for storing logs of previously synced data.

Provide credentials

Enter the following fields into Hightouch:

User: This can be your personal Redshift login or a dedicated user for Hightouch. At minimum, this user must have read access to the data you wish to sync. If using the Lightning sync engine, you must also grant this user additional permissions as described above.
(Optional) Password: The password for the user specified above.

Test your connection

When setting up a source for the first time, Hightouch validates the following:

Network connectivity
Redshift credentials
Permission to list schemas and tables
Permission to write to hightouch_planner schema
Permission to write to hightouch_audit schema

All configurations must pass the first three, while those with the Lightning engine must pass all of them. Some sources may initially fail connection tests due to timeouts. Once a connection is established, subsequent API requests should happen more quickly, so it’s best to retry tests if they first fail. You can do this by clicking Test again. If you’ve retried the tests and verified your credentials are correct but the tests are still failing, don’t hesitate to .

Create models

Once your source configuration has passed the necessary validation, your source setup is complete. Next, you can set up models to define which data you want to pull from Amazon Redshift. The Amazon Redshift source supports these modeling methods:

writing a query in the SQL editor
using the visual table selector
leveraging existing dbt models
leveraging existing Looker Looks
leveraging existing Sigma workbooks

You may also want to consider storing sync logs in Redshift. Like using the Lightning sync engine versus the standard one, this feature lets you use Redshift instead of Hightouch infrastructure. Rather than performance gains, it makes your sync log data available for more complex analysis. Refer to the warehouse sync logs docs to learn more.

You must enable the Lightning sync engine to store sync logs in your warehouse.

Workload management

Amazon Redshift offers powerful and flexible settings for workload management (WLM). Hightouch cannot automatically manage your WLM rules, but does enable the use of WLM to manage resource use by Hightouch by setting query groups. Hightouch will automatically set the query group to either

ht_interactive for interactive queries which need low latency, such as running model previews or schema discovery
ht_batch for batch operations that run in the background, such as rETL syncs

If no WLM configuration references these query groups, all Hightouch queries will run using Redshift’s default queue behaviour.

Tips and troubleshooting

If you run into an issue this page doesn’t cover, .

Spectrum nested query error

You may receive a Spectrum nested query error if you are using Amazon Redshift Spectrum as your data source. Hightouch uses a wrapper query around your model query for obtaining the COUNT of query results. Spectrum has limitations around nested data that this can causes issues with. To resolve the error, you can try the following:

Create a materialized view of the results set you want Hightouch to query.
Add a commented out -- ORDER BY statement to your model definition. Hightouch’s Redshift source disables the row counter wrapper query if there’s an ORDER BY in the query. However, Redshift Spectrum doesn’t allow ORDER BY statements, hence the need to comment it out. Even commented out, Hightouch disables the wrapper query.

Error: could not identify an ordering operator for type “unknown”

You may receive a this error if you are using many UNION set operators within your SQL query. To resolve the error, you can try replacing UNION with UNION ALL. To learn more about UNION and UNION ALL, check out the article by The Data School.

Error: permission denied for relation ‘objectname’

You may receive this error when trying to access newly created objects in the schema and you lack permissions to do so. This error happens when access is granted for only the objects present in a schema when the access was first granted. By default, access isn’t automatically granted for objects that are created under the current schema. To learn about how to grant permissions you can check the AWS documentation here.

Sources

Destinations

Extensions

AI integrations

Overview

Connection configuration

Choose connection type

Configure your source

Choose your sync engine

Basic versus Lightning engine comparison

Lightning engine setup

Provide credentials

Test your connection

Create models

Workload management

Tips and troubleshooting

Spectrum nested query error

Error: could not identify an ordering operator for type “unknown”

Error: permission denied for relation ‘objectname’

​Overview

​Connection configuration

​Choose connection type

​Configure your source

​Choose your sync engine

​Basic versus Lightning engine comparison

​Lightning engine setup

​Provide credentials

​Test your connection

​Create models

​Workload management

​Tips and troubleshooting

​Spectrum nested query error

​Error: could not identify an ordering operator for type “unknown”

​Error: permission denied for relation ‘objectname’

Overview

Connection configuration

Choose connection type

Configure your source

Choose your sync engine

Basic versus Lightning engine comparison

Lightning engine setup

Provide credentials

Test your connection

Create models

Workload management

Tips and troubleshooting

Spectrum nested query error

Error: could not identify an ordering operator for type “unknown”

Error: permission denied for relation ‘objectname’