TiDB into Apache Arrow through ADBC, using MySQL Connector/ODBC 9.4 (adbcBridge 0.1.0)

[singhpratech]

adbcBridge is a small Apache-2.0 ADBC driver written in C11 that loads an ODBC driver and exposes it through the Arrow ADBC C ABI: block-cursor reads straight into Arrow record batches, bulk ingest, metadata, partitioned parallel reads. I ran TiDB through it as one of 46 databases in a single compatibility workload and wanted to share the entry here.

What was verified (TiDB 7.5; driver: MySQL Connector/ODBC 9.4):

• Linux: PASS
• macOS arm64: PASS (TiDB, MySQL wire 8.0.11)
• Windows x64: PASS

What the compatibility entry records: no quirks; run from the tarball, the driver needs PLUGIN_DIR= for the mysql_native_password client plugin TiDB's root account uses. Full entry: docs/COMPATIBILITY.md.

The mysql ADBC driver may also work with TiDB over its wire protocol; this path goes through MySQL Connector/ODBC and records exactly what it needed, so it is a second, documented route rather than a replacement.

Trying it (Python; Rust, Go, Java, C# and R are on the docs site):

pip install adbcbridge

import adbcbridge
with adbcbridge.connect(uri="Driver=MySQL ODBC 9.4 Unicode Driver;Server=127.0.0.1;Port=4000;User=root;Database=test") as conn:
    with conn.cursor() as cur:
        cur.execute("SELECT ...")
        table = cur.fetch_arrow_table()   # a pyarrow.Table

Links: repository · docs · upstream notes · PyPI

It is a 0.1.0. If the entry says something wrong about TiDB, or you run a version or driver I didn't, an issue on the repository with the details is the most useful thing you could send.

[dveeden]

You might be interested in #65422 by @backkem

[singhpratech]

Thanks — that's genuinely interesting. If #65422 lands, TiDB becomes reachable through the official Arrow Flight SQL ADBC driver with no ODBC in the path, which for Arrow-shaped workloads is the better route — and exactly the kind of native path adbcBridge is designed to defer to (it hands the connection over when a native ADBC driver is present). If it would be useful, I'd be glad to build the flightsql-tagged server and run the same compatibility workload against it through the Flight SQL ADBC driver, and report what I find on the PR.