Real-Time Data for AI: The Complete Architecture Guide

AI systems — agents, RAG, recommendations, fraud detection — all need fresh data. This guide covers the complete architecture for delivering real-time data to AI: CDC for database changes, Kafka for events, RisingWave for processing, and MCP for agent access.

Overview

AI systems — agents, RAG, recommendations, fraud detection — all need fresh data. This guide covers the complete architecture for delivering real-time data to AI: CDC for database changes, Kafka for events, RisingWave for processing, and MCP for agent access.

Why Streaming?

Traditional batch approaches compute these metrics hourly or daily. Streaming SQL computes them continuously — every event is processed within milliseconds, and materialized views always reflect the current state.

Implementation Pattern

-- Universal streaming pattern
CREATE SOURCE events (...) WITH (connector='kafka', topic='events', ...);

CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW metrics AS
SELECT dimension, COUNT(*) as count, SUM(amount) as total,
  AVG(amount) as avg_amount, MAX(ts) as last_event
FROM events WHERE ts > NOW() - INTERVAL '24 hours'
GROUP BY dimension;

-- Query with any PostgreSQL client
SELECT * FROM metrics ORDER BY count DESC;

Architecture

Data Sources → RisingWave (SQL Processing) → Materialized Views (Serving)
                                            → Iceberg Sink (Historical)

RisingWave provides both real-time serving (via PostgreSQL protocol) and historical storage (via Iceberg sink). Applications, dashboards, and AI agents query the same materialized views.

Key Benefits

• Sub-second freshness: Views update with every event
• SQL-only: No Java, no custom code, no streaming frameworks
• PostgreSQL compatible: Use psql, Grafana, Metabase, any PG driver
• Open source: Apache 2.0, self-hostable, no vendor lock-in
• S3 state: Elastic scaling, fast recovery, cost-efficient storage

Frequently Asked Questions

How fresh is the data?

RisingWave materialized views update within milliseconds of each event. Point queries return in 10-20ms p99. This is real-time — not near-real-time.

Do I need to change my application code?

No. RisingWave speaks PostgreSQL protocol. Any application that queries PostgreSQL can query RisingWave without code changes. Just change the connection string.