Installing Third-Party Database Drivers

Some Tabsdata connectors depend on Python database drivers that Tabsdata cannot redistribute because of their licensing terms. These drivers are not included in the Tabsdata distribution, and are not installed by default.

If you use one of the affected connectors, you must install its driver explicitly as part of the Tabsdata installation.

Which drivers do I need?

Connector	Required package
MySQL, MySQL CDC, MariaDB	mysql-connector-python
PostgreSQL, PostgreSQL CDC	psycopg2-binary
Oracle	oracledb

Declaring the drivers

The Tabsdata package must be installed twice when creating a Tabsdata server: once in your own terminal before running tdkserver quickstart, and once more by the Tabsdata server's own shell process when it is being created. As a result, driver installation instructions must be passed as a plain pip requirements file listing the drivers and their versions that should be installed on Tabsdata's shell process.

Adding a driver to a Tabsdata server

Use tdkserver venv update to add or change database drivers.

Step 1Create a requirements file with your additional drivers

requirements-td.txt

mysql-connector-python==9.6.0
psycopg2-binary==2.9.12
oracledb==3.2.0

Step 2pass the file path into the tdkserver venv update command

Tabsdata InstanceRequirements File

tdkserver venv update --instance <TABSDATA_INSTANCE> --name fn --requirements <REQS_FILE>
tdkserver venv update --instance <TABSDATA_INSTANCE> --name ag --requirements <REQS_FILE>

You need to add the requirements to both fn and ag, otherwise the Tabsdata AI Agent and MCP server won't be able to access your external systems to fetch metadata and sample data.

Until the driver is present in the environment that executes functions, any connector that needs it will fail at run time.

note

When using Kminus (quickstart), Tabsdata is restarted as part of this update. When using EKS, Tabsdata is not restarted.

EKS installation

For an EKS installation the requirements file lives inside the instance's init assets.

Step 1Initialise the instance

tdkserver init

Step 2Edit the requirements file in the instance config directory

Tabsdata Instance

~/.tabsdata/instances/<TABSDATA_INSTANCE>/init/assets/configs/requirements-td.txt

Add the necessary database drivers as shown in Declaring the drivers:

requirements-td.txt

mysql-connector-python==9.6.0
psycopg2-binary==2.9.12
oracledb==3.2.0

Step 3Continue with the rest of the Tabsdata EKS setup instructions

See Install on EKS.

The drivers are baked into the function runner environment during setup, so they are available to connector functions at execution time.

Troubleshooting

A connector fails with a missing-module error. The driver for that connector is not installed in the environment running the function. Confirm that the package is listed in the requirements file, that tdkserver venv update ran against both fn and ag (or, for EKS, that the file is in the instance configs directory), and that the update has been re-run since the file changed.

The driver fails to build during installation. Prefer the binary distributions named above (psycopg2-binary rather than psycopg2). If a build is still attempted, the installation environment is missing the compiler or client-library headers that the driver's source distribution needs.