From Postgres to Analytics: How Hayden AI Powers Data Movement with Estuary

Challenge

Hayden AI, building AI-driven smart city transportation solutions, faced a few challenges with their data infrastructure. Their AI-powered cameras generate extensive data for transit efficiency and violation detection, which must be rapidly processed and reliably delivered to partner agencies. Initially relying on Airbyte for replication and a basic PostgreSQL database for both operations and analytics, Hayden AI encountered severe limitations:

• Slow, unreliable data replication causing a 24-hour delay.
• Lack of schema evolution support hindering growth.
• Inability to replicate complex PostgreSQL data types, including PostGIS.
• Inefficient batch processing negatively impacting real-time analytics.

Ruslan Kesheshian, Data Platform Engineer, explained their frustration:

"Airbyte couldn't handle our advanced data types or provide full replication capabilities. We needed a solution for real-time replication with full schema evolution, including complex types like PostGIS."

Hayden AI required:

• Real-time data synchronization with schema evolution
• Support for complex PostgreSQL data types
• Affordable, reliable performance

Solution

Estuary Flow emerged as the optimal solution, offering a unique approach tailored to Hayden AI's requirements. Estuary implemented an advanced Change Data Capture (CDC) solution, extracting real-time WAL logs from PostgreSQL and materializing data hourly into AWS Redshift. This significantly reduced replication delays and ensured data consistency with guaranteed exactly once delivery.

Key differentiators included:

• Independent capture and materialization processes enhancing reliability
• Robust support for PostgreSQL complex types and AWS Redshift SUPER type
• Automated schema evolution without manual intervention

Ruslan highlighted the ease of implementation and collaborative experience:

"The setup was straightforward, and the Estuary team was incredibly responsive. We went from evaluation to production without friction."

Deliverables included:

• Hourly data synchronization pipeline
• Seamless integration with dbt Cloud for incremental transformation
• Robust disaster recovery through independent data capture and storage

Results

Estuary Flow delivered transformative results for Hayden AI:

• 95% reduction in replication lag: From 24 hours to approximately 1 hour.
• 60% monthly cost savings: Reduced replication expenses by more than half of the original amount.
• 5TB successful data backfill: Ensured comprehensive and accurate historical data.

These improvements enhanced Hayden AI's ability to deliver timely, accurate analytics reports to city agencies and accelerated their predictive analytics capabilities.

Looking ahead, Hayden AI plans further integration, potentially utilizing Estuary derivations for even faster real-time analytics. Ruslan emphasized the strategic importance of this partnership:

"Working with Estuary felt like having an extension of our team. Their responsiveness and technical depth made all the difference. Estuary democratized our data warehouse; now we can reliably move data from A to B without breaking the bank."