Data ingestion: Setting up a connector for Postgres with CDC enabled.

Wola — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:49:31 GMT

Hello,
I'm trying to ingest data from my RDS instance and set up change data capture on Databricks. Everything on the Postgres side has been done so that replication is possible, but CDC is still greyed out. I have asked Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT. I haven't got any concrete help. I read that it's an issue of Databricks needing to enable Lakeflow Connect for Postgres or something like.

P.S.: I might not have explained it well, but I really need help with it.

Re: Data ingestion: Setting up a connector for Postgres with CDC enabled.

ThomazNeto — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 12:00:29 GMT

Hi Wola,

Don't worry about your Postgres side, that's most likely not the problem. The greyed-out option is coming from Databricks. The PostgreSQL CDC connector in Lakeflow Connect is still in Public Preview, and this one isn't self-service: the docs say "Contact your Databricks account team to request access." There is nothing to flip on the Previews page. Until the workspace is enrolled, the wizard only lets you pick Query-based capture, which is exactly what your screenshot shows.
https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/ingestion/lakeflow-connect/postgresql

So step one is a message to your account team asking to enable the PostgreSQL connector preview for your workspace.

While you wait, two things worth checking. The CDC pipeline needs serverless compute enabled in the workspace (the gateway runs on classic compute, the pipeline itself is serverless), and it only replicates from a primary instance, read replicas won't work.
https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/ingestion/lakeflow-connect/postgresql-pipeline

And the RDS checklist from the docs, just to compare with what you've done: rds.logical_replication = 1 in the parameter group, a replication user with the rds_replication role and the REPLICATION attribute, a publication, a replication slot created with pgoutput (the only plugin supported), and REPLICA IDENTITY set to DEFAULT or FULL on every table. The slot name and publication name are what the wizard asks for later, in the Database setup step.
https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/ingestion/lakeflow-connect/postgresql-source-setup
https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/ingestion/lakeflow-connect/postgresql-limits

If you can't wait, Query-based capture does work with Postgres today, no preview needed. Just know what you're getting: it doesn't read the WAL, it runs on a schedule and picks up changes through a cursor column (a timestamp or increasing id) per table. You won't see intermediate states of a row, and hard deletes are only tracked in Beta. Fine for a lot of use cases, but it isn't real CDC.
https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/ingestion/lakeflow-connect/query-based-overview

Good luck with it.

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Data ingestion: Setting up a connector for Postgres with CDC enabled.

Re: Data ingestion: Setting up a connector for Postgres with CDC enabled.