Question 1

How do I connect a spreadsheet?

Accepted Answer

Either Google OAuth, then pick the spreadsheet, or a service account: enable the Sheets API, upload its JSON key, and share the spreadsheet with the service account's email address. You also tell Polytomic whether row one holds headers, which decides where the column names come from.

Question 2

Does it read only what changed?

Accepted Answer

No. Sheets exposes nothing to checkpoint against, so every ETL run scans the whole sheet, fetching row ranges in batches. For the reference tables people usually keep in spreadsheets that is completely fine. For anything large it is the wrong tool, and you would be better off moving the data to a real source first.

Question 3

What types do the columns get?

Accepted Answer

Text by default, because a spreadsheet cell has no intrinsic type. Where you have set Google data validation rules, columns can be promoted to numeric, date or boolean instead. If the types matter to you downstream, setting validation on the sheet is the lever that controls them.

Question 4

What breaks if someone inserts a column?

Accepted Answer

Less than you would fear. The new column is discovered on the next schema refresh and can be added to the sync, though an existing sync will not start writing it until you enable it. Renaming a header is the more disruptive edit, because it reads as one column disappearing and another arriving, and Polytomic does not drop the old column during a migration.

Question 5

Is a spreadsheet worth putting in a database at all?

Accepted Answer

Usually yes, for one reason. The spreadsheet is often the only place a mapping lives: account tiers, territory assignments, budget targets, the list of which customers count as strategic. Getting it into Postgres turns a manual lookup into a join, and it is the cheapest ETL any team ever sets up.

Sync Google Sheets to PostgreSQL

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Connect Google Sheets in Polytomic

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