is a sync which executes a

drop cascade

potentially noticeable by a user? i.e. is that a possibly visible temporary state?

Yes, a sync that executes a

DROP ... CASCADE

operation can potentially be noticeable by a user. This is because the operation involves dropping and re-creating the final table produced by a sync, sometimes referred to as a "soft reset". However, Airbyte tries to make this process as transactional as possible, and it should be invisible to most observers. The process involves erasing the raw tables and building a new temporary final table first. Airbyte then attempts to do an atomic swap of the old and temporary final tables, usually via a rename at the last second. It's important to note that additional permissions, constraints, views, or other rules you apply to the final table outside of Airbyte could be lost during a sync. Therefore, it's not recommended to alter the final tables as it may cause issues with the sync. You can find more details about this process in the [Airbyte documentation](https://docs.airbyte.com/using-airbyte/core-concepts/typing-deduping#on-final-table-re-creation).

@kapa.ai is that independent of which sync mode is used?

Hmm, I don't know enough to give you a confident answer yet. Could you please provide more context or clarify your question? Are you asking about a specific feature or process in Airbyte that might be affected by the sync mode? In general, the sync mode in Airbyte determines how data is read from a source and written to a destination. It can affect the shape of the data, whether duplicates will exist in the destination, and other aspects of the data syncing process. You can learn more about sync modes in Airbyte from their [documentation](https://docs.airbyte.com/using-airbyte/core-concepts/sync-modes/).

@kapa.ai is there a sync mode that will never use drop.. cascade?

A message from kapa.ai

Yes, there are sync modes in Airbyte that do not involve dropping and recreating tables, which is what

DROP...CASCADE

does in SQL. For instance, the

Incremental Append

and

Incremental Append + Deduped

modes add new records to the existing data in the destination, without dropping any existing data. Similarly, the

Full Refresh Append

mode syncs the whole stream and appends data to the destination, again without dropping existing data. Here are the details of these sync modes: 1. [Incremental Append](https://docs.airbyte.com/using-airbyte/core-concepts/sync-modes/incremental-append): Syncs new records from the stream and appends data in the destination. 2. [Incremental Append + Deduped](https://docs.airbyte.com/using-airbyte/core-concepts/sync-modes/incremental-append-deduped): Syncs new records from the stream and appends data in the destination, also provides a de-duplicated view mirroring the state of the stream in the source. 3. [Full Refresh Append](https://docs.airbyte.com/using-airbyte/core-concepts/sync-modes/full-refresh-append): Syncs the whole stream and appends data in the destination. Please note that the actual behavior might depend on the specific source and destination connectors being used, as well as the configuration of the sync process.