A self-contained SQL Server environment with CDC enabled and a data generator producing continuous inserts, updates, and deletes against a sales table. Useful for demoing or testing an Estuary SQL Server CDC capture end-to-end.

• sqlserver/ — SQL Server 2022 with an init script that enables CDC, creates the sales table, and sets up the flow_capture user.
• datagen/ — Python container that inserts, updates, and deletes rows in dbo.sales once per second.
• ngrok — exposes SQL Server publicly over TCP so the hosted Estuary connector can reach it.
• flow.yaml — Estuary capture spec wiring the SQL Server source to a collection in your tenant.

Set your ngrok token and start the stack:

export NGROK_AUTHTOKEN=<your-token>
docker compose up -d

Grab the public host/port from the ngrok dashboard at http://localhost:4040.

flow.yaml is the spec deployed via flowctl. It defines a SQL Server CDC capture and one binding for the dbo.sales table:

captures:
  your-prefix/sqlserver-cdc/source-sqlserver:
    endpoint:
      connector:
        image: ghcr.io/estuary/source-sqlserver:v0
        config:
          address: <ngrok-host>:<ngrok-port>
          database: SampleDB
          user: flow_capture
          password: Secretsecret1
          historyMode: false
    bindings:
    - resource:
        namespace: dbo
        stream: sales
      target: your-prefix/sqlserver-cdc/dbo/sales

Before publishing, edit address to match the host/port from the ngrok dashboard, and replace your-prefix with your own tenant/prefix everywhere it appears (in flow.yaml, in the imported yamls under your-prefix/, and the directory name itself).

Then discover, publish, and verify:

# (Re-)run discovery to refresh bindings from the source — optional once
# bindings are present.
flowctl discover --source flow.yaml

# Publish the capture and the generated collection.
flowctl catalog publish --source flow.yaml --auto-approve

# Check status; first transition should be PENDING → BACKFILLING → OK.
flowctl catalog status your-prefix/sqlserver-cdc/source-sqlserver

# Peek at a few documents flowing through the collection.
flowctl collections read \
  --collection your-prefix/sqlserver-cdc/dbo/sales \
  --uncommitted | head

The init.sql script provisions a dedicated CDC user the capture connects as:

• user: flow_capture
• password: Secretsecret1
• database: SampleDB

It also grants the permissions the connector needs (SELECT on dbo and cdc, plus VIEW DATABASE STATE) and enables CDC on dbo.sales.