Warehouse FAQs

Can I control what data is sent to my warehouse?

Yes. Customers on Segment’s Business plan can choose which sources, collections, and properties sync to your data warehouse using Warehouse Selective Sync.

Selective Sync helps manage the data Segment sends to each warehouse, allowing you to sync different sets of data from the same source to different warehouses.

When you disable a source, collection or property, Segment no longer syncs data from that source. Segment won’t delete any historical data from your warehouse. When you re-enable a source, Segment syncs all events since the last sync. This doesn’t apply when a collection or property is re-enabled. Only new data generated after re-enabling a collection or property will sync to your warehouse.

You can also use the Integration Object to control whether or not data is sent to a specific warehouse.

Don’t send data to any Warehouse

integrations: {
 All: true,
 Warehouses: {
    all: false
 }
}

Send data to all Warehouses

integrations: {
 All: false,
 Warehouses: {
    all: true,
 }
}

Send data to specific Warehouses

integrations: {
 All: false,
 Warehouses: {
    warehouseIds: ["<id1>", "<id2>"]
 }
}

Can we add, tweak, or delete some of the tables?

You have full admin access to your Segment Warehouse. However, don’t tweak or delete Segment generated tables, as this may cause problems for the systems that upload new data.

If you want to join across additional datasets, feel free to create and upload additional tables.

Can we transform or clean up old data to new formats or specs?

This is a common question if the data you’re collecting has evolved over time. For example, if you used to track the event Signup but now track Signed Up, you’d probably like to merge those two tables to make querying simple and understandable.

Segment does not have a way to update the event data in the context of your warehouse to retroactively merge the tables created from changed events. Instead, you can create a “materialized” view of the unioned events. This is supported in Redshift, Postgres, Snowflake, and others, but may not be available in all warehouses.

Protocols customers can also use Transformations to change events at the source, which applies to all cloud-mode destinations (destinations that receive data from the Segment servers) including your data warehouse. Protocols Transformations offer an excellent way to quickly resolve implementation mistakes and help transition events to a Segment spec.

Note: Transformations are currently limited to event, property and trait name changes, and do not apply to historical data.

Can I change the data type of a column in the warehouse?

Yes. Data types are initially set up in your warehouse based on the first value that comes in from a source, but you can request data type changes by reaching out to Segment support for assistance.

Keep in mind that Segment only uses general data types when loading data in your warehouse. Therefore, some of the common scenarios are:

• Changing data type from timestamp to varchar
• Changing data type from integer to float
• Changing data type from boolean to varchar

More granular changes (such as the examples below) wouldn’t normally be handled by the Support team, thus they often need to be made within the warehouse itself:

• Expanding data type varchar(256) to varchar(2048)
• Updating data type integer to bigint
• Updating data type float to float8

Can the data type definitions in Protocols be enforced in a warehouse schema?

The data type definitions in Protocols have no impact on the warehouse schema.

How do I find my source slug?

Your source slug can be found in the URL when you’re looking at the source destinations page or live debugger. The URL structure will look like this:

https://segment.com/[my-workspace]/sources/[my-source-slug]/overview

How do I find my warehouse id?

Your warehouse id appears in the URL when you look at the warehouse destinations page. The URL structure looks like this:

app.segment.com/[my-workspace]/warehouses/[my-warehouse-id]/overview

How fresh is the data in Segment Warehouses?

Data is available in Warehouses within 24-48 hours, depending on your tier’s sync frequency. For more information about sync frequency by tier, see Sync Frequency.

Real-time loading of the data into Segment Warehouses would cause significant performance degradation at query time. To optimize for your query speed, reliability, and robustness, Segment guarantees that your data will be available in your warehouse within 24 hours. The underlying datastore has a subtle tradeoff between data freshness, robustness, and query speed. For the best experience, Segment needs to balance all three of these.

What if I want to add custom data to my warehouse?

You can freely load data into your Segment Warehouse to join against your source data tables.

The only restriction when loading your own data into your connected warehouse is that you should not add or remove tables within schemas generated by Segment for your sources. Those tables have a naming scheme of <source-slug>.<table> and should only be modified by Segment. Arbitrarily deleting columns from these tables may result in mismatches upon load.

If you want to insert custom data into your warehouse, create new schemas that are not associated with an existing source, since these may be deleted upon a reload of the Segment data in the cluster.

Segment recommends scripting any sort of additions of data you might have to warehouse, so that you aren’t doing one-off tasks that can be hard to recover from in the future in the case of hardware failure.

Which IPs should I allowlist?

Segment recommends enabling IP allowlists for added security. All Segment users with workspaces hosted in the US who use allowlists in their warehouses must update those allowlists to include the following ranges:

• 52.25.130.38/32
• 34.223.203.0/28

Users with workspaces in the EU must allowlist 3.251.148.96/29.

Will Segment sync my historical data?

Segment loads up to two months of your historical data when you connect a warehouse.

For full historical backfills you’ll need to be a Segment Business plan customer. If you’d like to learn more about our Business plan and all the features that come with it, check out our pricing page.

What do you recommend for Postgres: Amazon or Heroku?

Heroku’s simple set up and administration process make it a great option to get up and running quickly.

Amazon’s service has some more powerful features and will be more cost-effective for most cases. However, first time users of Amazon Web Services (AWS) will likely need to spend some time with the documentation to get set up properly.

How do I prevent a source from syncing to some or all warehouses?

When you create a new source, the source syncs to all warehouse(s) in the workspace by default. You can prevent the source from syncing to some or all warehouses in the workspace in two ways:

• Segment app: When you add a source from the Workspace Overview page, deselect the warehouse(s) you don’t want the source to sync to as part of the “Add Source” process. All warehouses are automatically selected by default.
• Public API: Send a request to the Update Warehouse endpoint to update the settings for the warehouse(s) you want to prevent from syncing.

After a source is created, you can enable or disable a warehouse sync within the Warehouse Settings page.

Can I be notified when warehouse syncs fail?

If you enabled activity notifications for your storage destination, you’ll receive notifications in the Segment app for the fifth and 20th consecutive warehouse failures for all incoming data. Segment does not track failures on a per connection (‘source<>warehouse’) basis. Segment’s notification structure also identifies global issues encountered when connecting to your warehouse, like bad credentials or being completely inaccessible to Segment.

To sign up for warehouse sync notifications:

1. Open the Segment app.
2. Go to Settings > User Preferences.
3. In the Activity Notifications section, select Storage Destinations.
4. Enable Storage Destination Sync Failed.

How is the data formatted in my warehouse?

Data in your warehouse is formatted into schemas, which involve a detailed description of database elements (tables, views, indexes, synonyms, etc.) and the relationships that exist between elements. Segment’s schemas use the following template:
<source>.<collection>.<property>, for example, segment_engineering.tracks.user_id, where source refers to the source or project name (segment_engineering), collection refers to the event (tracks), and the property refers to the data being collected (user_id). Note: It is not possible to have different sources feed data into the same schema in your warehouse. While setting up a new schema, you cannot use a duplicate schema name.

Schema data for Segment warehouses is represented in snake case.

For more information about Warehouse Schemas, see the Warehouse Schemas page.

If my syncs fail and get fixed, do I need to ask for a backfill?

If your syncs fail, you do not need to reach out to Segment Support to request a backfill. Once a successful sync takes place, Segment automatically loads all of the data generated since the last successful sync occurred.

Can I change my schema names once they’ve been created?

Segment stores the name of your schema in the SQL Settings page. Changing the name of your schema in the app without updating the name in your data warehouse causes a new schema to form, one that doesn’t contain historical data.

To change the name of your schema without disruptions:

1. Open the Segment app, select Connections and click Destinations.
2. Select the warehouse you’d like to rename the schema for from the list of destinations.
3. On the overview page for your source, select Settings.
4. Disable the Sync Data toggle and click Save Settings.
5. Select Connections and click Sources.
6. Select a source that syncs data with your warehouse from your list of sources, and select Settings.
7. Select SQL Settings and update the “Schema Name” field with the new name for your schema and click Save Changes.

   Note: This will set the schema name for all existing and future destinations. The new name must be lowercase and may include underscores.

8. Repeat steps six and seven until you rename all sources that sync data to your warehouse.
9. Open the third-party host of your database, and rename the schema.
10. Open the Segment app, select Connections and click Destinations.
11. Select the warehouse you disabled syncs for from the list of destinations.
12. On the overview page for your source, select Settings.
13. Enable the Sync Data toggle and click Save Settings.

Can I selectively filter data/events sent to my warehouse based on a property?

At the moment, there isn’t a way to selectively filter events that are sent to the warehouse. The warehouse connector works quite differently from our streaming destinations and only has the selective sync functionality that allows you to enable/disable specific properties or events.

Can data from multiple sources be synced to the same database schema?

It’s not possible for different sources to sync data directly to the same schema in your warehouse. When setting up a new schema within the Segment UI, you can’t use a schema name that’s already in use by another source. Segment recommends syncing the data separately and then joining it downstream in your warehouse.

For more information about Warehouse Schemas, see the Warehouse Schemas page.