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Source and Target

Source and Target gems define how Prophecy reads and writes data in your pipeline.

There are two types of sources and targets:

Source/Target Gem Drawer

caution

When deciding between tables and external sources, consider the primary SQL connection in your Prophecy fabric. Processing tables natively in the SQL warehouse will be fast, while processing external data is slower. Do not create an external connection that duplicates the primary SQL warehouse connection in your fabric.

Tables​

Tables are natively read from and written to the SQL warehouse that is configured as your primary SQL connection in a Prophecy fabric. You can add existing tables from your data warehouse to Prophecy, or you can create new tables directly in Prophecy.

NameDescriptionGem Type
TablePersistent storage of structured data in your SQL warehouse. Faster for frequent queries (indexed).Source or Target
ViewA virtual table that derives data dynamically from a query. Slower for complex queries (computed at runtime).Source or Target
SeedSmall CSV-format files that you can write directly in Prophecy.Source only
tip

Once you have used a table in a project, you can easily reuse that table as a source. Find your tables in the Project tab of the left sidebar.

External sources and targets​

To use data from outside of your SQL warehouse, you can use external sources and targets. When you connect to an external data source, the data you read and write is not persisted in Prophecy. In other words, all data is transformed in memory—no data gets written to disk.

To use external sources and targets, you need to set up the corresponding connections.

What's next​

View the complete set of source and target gems in the following sections.