How to Build a Real-Time Operational Data Hub with TapData-Tapdata

How to Build a Real-Time Operational Data Hub with TapData

Jul 30,2025

Introduction

Building a high-performance operational data hub can dramatically improve the flow of data across your enterprise, enabling use cases like Customer 360, real-time analytics, and intelligent automation. In this tutorial, we walk through how to use TapData to implement a real-time data hub—from source ingestion to downstream consumption.

TapData is purpose-built for real-time data integration, with built-in CDC, schema mapping, and support for modern targets like MongoDB, Apache Doris, and real-time APIs.

Step 1: Define Your Data Hub Architecture

Before implementation, define the core data sources and consumers. A typical operational data hub scenario may include:

Sources:
- MySQL (ERP system)
- SQL Server (CRM system)
- Oracle (billing system)

Targets:
- MongoDB (Customer 360 document view)
- ClickHouse (real-time analytics)
- API Gateway (mobile apps)

The goal is to enable sub-second latency from source updates to target visibility.

Step 2: Configure Source Connectors with CDC

TapData supports log-based Change Data Capture (CDC) for many mainstream databases. For each source, configure a CDC connector.

Example: Configuring MySQL CDC

Create a new MySQL connection in TapData.
Enable binlog on the MySQL instance (binlog_format=ROW).
Grant necessary privileges to the TapData user.
Create a “CDC” type sync task in the TapData console.

TapData will automatically:

Parse DML changes (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE)
Map source schema to downstream target
Track offsets for fault tolerance and retry

Repeat the same process for other sources like Oracle, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server.

Step 3: Build Real-Time Pipelines to Target Systems

With sources connected, define how the data should be routed and transformed in real-time.

Example 1: MongoDB for Unified Document Views

Use TapData’s visual flow editor to create a data pipeline
Configure field mapping and key structure for target MongoDB collections
Optionally enable deduplication, type transformation, and conflict resolution

MongoDB is ideal for representing complex, nested business entities such as customers, orders, or assets in a unified document format. TapData enables you to merge multi-source records—from CRM, ERP, and service platforms—into a single real-time JSON document per entity, eliminating fragmentation and simplifying API or UI consumption.

Example 2: ClickHouse for Real-Time OLAP

Select ClickHouse as the sync target in TapData
Choose the appropriate merge strategy (e.g., insert or deduplicate by primary key) based on your table design
Use TapData’s built-in type mapping and transformation engine to align source fields with ClickHouse’s column types

ClickHouse is well-suited for high-speed analytical workloads. TapData ensures seamless real-time data delivery by managing schema conversion, change tracking, and efficient batch-flush writing to ClickHouse, even under high write throughput.

Step 4: Enable Materialized Views for Real-Time Consumption

TapData supports auto-refreshed materialized views for downstream applications. These are real-time snapshots of data transformations, ideal for:

BI dashboards
External APIs
AI model input pipelines

You can define transformation logic (joins, filters, enrichments) visually, and TapData keeps the result updated within milliseconds of upstream changes.

Step 5: Monitor, Scale, and Govern

TapData provides a built-in monitoring dashboard to track:

Task health
Sync latency
Throughput (records per second)
Error logs and retries

You can also:

Enable alerting rules for failures
Configure output frequency and batch size to avoid overloading downstream systems
Ensure access control is applied at the API or data consumer layer to protect sensitive information

Summary: Build Once, Stream Everywhere

With TapData, building an operational data hub is no longer a months-long infrastructure project. In just a few steps, you can connect heterogeneous systems, stream data in real time, and serve up-to-date data to downstream consumers — without complex code or ETL scripts.

Whether you’re running modern SaaS, legacy ERP, or hybrid architectures, TapData helps you unify your data, instantly.

>>> Ready to start building your real-time data hub? Request a demo →

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