Question 1

What do I need to connect Airtable?

Accepted Answer

OAuth. You authorize the bases and tables you want, and the authorizing Airtable user has to be able to see them, because Polytomic inherits exactly that access. If a table is missing from the picker, permissions on the Airtable side are almost always the reason.

Question 2

Does it read incrementally?

Accepted Answer

No. Every ETL run paginates the table or view in full, because the bulk reader has no modified time cursor to work from. Airtable bases are usually small enough that this does not matter, but it is worth knowing before you point it at a base holding hundreds of thousands of records.

Question 3

How do Airtable field types map?

Accepted Answer

More faithfully than you might expect. Text, email, URL, phone, single select, formulas and rollups become TEXT. Checkbox becomes BOOLEAN. Number, currency, percent, rating and duration become numeric or integer types. Date, datetime, created time and modified time become DATE or TIMESTAMP. Multi select, links, collaborators, lookups and attachments become JSON arrays, with attachments reduced to URLs and collaborators to email addresses.

Question 4

How do I join Airtable rows to other tables?

Accepted Answer

Use the Airtable record ID, which is added as a unique text column on every table. That is the stable key. The primary field value is not, because anyone with access to the base can edit it, and a renamed primary field will quietly break any join built on it.

Question 5

Why is it JSON and not JSONB?

Accepted Answer

Because the Postgres type mapping uses JSON for object and array types deliberately, rather than JSONB or native Postgres arrays. If you query those columns heavily and want the indexing JSONB gives you, cast or convert them in a downstream view rather than expecting the sync to hand you JSONB directly.

Sync Airtable to PostgreSQL

Sync Airtable to PostgreSQL with Polytomic

Field types preserved

Record ID retained

Full pagination each run

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Connect Airtable in Polytomic

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