Ingest

A load action reads data into a pipeline. Which one you reach for depends on where the data lives.

Your data is…	Reach for	Guide
Files landing in cloud storage (JSON, CSV, Parquet)	Auto Loader — incremental, exactly-once file ingestion	Incrementally ingest files with Auto Loader
An existing Delta table (any catalog)	Delta load — batch or streaming, cross-catalog	Ingest from a Delta table
The result of a SQL query over existing tables	SQL load	Ingest with a SQL query
In an operational database (Postgres, MySQL, …)	JDBC load	Ingest from a database over JDBC
A streaming Kafka topic	Kafka load	Ingest a streaming Kafka topic
Behind an API or protocol with no built-in loader	A custom Python data source	Ingest from a custom data source