How to Real-Time Sync MySQL RDS to Analytic DB with Alibaba DTS and dts-ads-writer

Prerequisites

You must enable Alibaba Cloud Data Transmission Service in the same cloud account as your RDS for MySQL instance. Download the dts-ads-writer plugin, unzip it on a server that can access the Internet (Alibaba Cloud ECS is recommended), and ensure Java 6+ (JRE/JDK) is installed.

Steps

Create the target table in the analytic database with the data update type set to real‑time write . Keep column names identical to those in MySQL.

In the DTS console, create a data subscription channel and record its channel ID.

Edit app.conf in the dts-ads-writer directory according to the example below, then restart the writer.

Configuration Example

The tables node maps rds_db.rds_table to ads_table, with column mappings col1 → col1_ads and col2 → col2_ads:

tables {
  rds_db.rds_table = {
    targetTable = "ads_table",
    columnMap = {
      col1 = "col1_ads",
      col2 = "col2_ads"
    }
  }
}

Important Notes

The primary key definitions of the MySQL table and the analytic DB table must be identical; otherwise data inconsistency may occur.

Only one analytic DB (specified by adsJdbcUrl) can be used per plugin process.

Each plugin process can subscribe to only one data channel; changing the subscription requires a process restart.

DDL operations on MySQL are not synchronized.

Changes to app.conf take effect after restarting the plugin.

Historical data can be re‑synced only for the most recent 24 hours by adjusting the consumption offset in the DTS console.

Synchronization performance is proportional to the server’s Internet bandwidth and disk IOPS.

Running and Monitoring

Start the writer with: sh bin/startup.sh Set up a monitoring program to watch the writer process and parse log entries. Errors are logged in the format ErrorCode=XXXX ErrorMessage=XXXX, which can be used for alerts.