Arrow Flight SQL

Arrow Flight SQL provides the highest-performance interface for streaming large analytical datasets between Altertable and your tools. Built on Apache Arrow's columnar format, it's ideal for:

• Analytics tools like dbt, Airbyte, and custom data pipelines
• Large result sets that benefit from efficient columnar data transfer
• High-throughput workloads requiring minimal serialization overhead

Authentication

Use your Altertable credentials with any Arrow Flight SQL client:

• Username: Your Altertable username
• Password: Your Altertable password

Quick Start

Arrow Flight SQL

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# Altertable exposes a native Arrow Flight SQL endpoint.
# Connect any Arrow Flight SQL-compatible client — no extra setup needed.

# Python (altertable-flightsql-python)
from altertable_flightsql import Client

# Connect to flight.altertable.ai:443 w/ TLS/SSL
with Client(username="your_username", password="your_password") as client:
    # Execute a query
    reader = client.query("SELECT * FROM users WHERE age > 18")

    # Process results
    for batch in reader:
        df = batch.data.to_pandas()
        print(df)

Python Client

Altertable provides an official Python client library (altertable-flightsql) that handles authentication, connection management, queries, prepared statements, transactions, and metadata operations.

Installation

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pip install altertable-flightsql

Prepared Statements

Prepare a statement once and execute it multiple times with different parameters:

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with client.prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = $id") as stmt:
    result = stmt.query(parameters={"id": 1})
    for batch in result:
        print(batch.data.to_pandas())

Transactions

Execute multiple statements atomically:

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with client.begin_transaction():
    client.execute("INSERT INTO users ...")
    client.execute("UPDATE accounts ...")

Metadata Queries

Discover catalogs, schemas, and tables:

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catalogs = client.get_catalogs()
schemas = client.get_schemas(catalog="my_db")
tables = client.get_tables(catalog="my_db", schema_pattern="public")

For more details, examples, and advanced usage, see the GitHub repository.

Other Clients

Any Arrow Flight SQL-compatible client can connect to flight.altertable.ai:443 with TLS.

Python ADBC

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import adbc_driver_flightsql.dbapi as flight_sql

conn = flight_sql.connect(
    uri="grpc+tls://flight.altertable.ai:443",
    db_kwargs={
        "username": "your_username",
        "password": "your_password"
    }
)

cursor = conn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT * FROM your_database.your_schema.your_table LIMIT 10")
results = cursor.fetchall()