# Getting Started

Now that you have successfully installed Meltano locally or in the cloud, you're ready to start create your first project, connect data sources, build pipelines, perform analysis and create dashboards.

# Create your first project

To initialize a new project, open your terminal and navigate to the directory that you'd like to store your Meltano projects in.

Next, to create your project, you will use the meltano init command which takes a PROJECT_NAME that is of your own choosing. For this guide, let's create a project called "carbon."

meltano init carbon

This will create a new directory named carbon in the current directory and initialize Meltano's basic directory structure inside it.

Inside the Meltano project directory, all plugin configuration (which may include tokens and passwords) is stored inside the .meltano directory, which is automatically added to the project's .gitignore file to prevent this potentially sensitive information from accidentally being pushed up to a hosted Git repository.

# Start the application

Now that you've created your first Meltano project, let's change directory to our new project and start Meltano UI:

cd carbon
meltano ui

Meltano is now running and should open a new tab at http://localhost:5000.

# Connect a data source

You should see now see the Extractors page, which contains various options for connecting your data source.

For this guide, we will be following the "Fast Path" to get you up and running as quickly as possible. So let's install tap-carbon-intensity by clicking on the Install button inside its card. While an Extractor is installed, you are presented with the following modal:

The tap-carbon-intensity Extractor does not require any configuration (like a username or password). Once the installation is complete, you will progress to the next step: "Load".

# Determine where the data will live

Once you've setup your Extractor, you will be greeted with the Loaders page:

Now that Meltano is pulling data in from your data source(s), you need to choose where and in what format you would like that data stored.

Let's use target-postgres for this project by clicking Install in its card.

While it is installing, make sure that your PostreSQL database is up and running. If you need help with this, check out our PostgreSQL database tutorial.

Once it is finished installing, you will see the following modal:

By default, target-postgres is configured with a database named warehouse that can be customized if desired. Once you configure your database as desired, click Save.

# Create your first pipeline

With our extractor and loader configured, you should now be greeted with the Schedules page with a modal to create your first pipeline!

Meltano provides Orchestration using Apache Airflow, which allows you to create scheduled tasks to run pipelines automatically. For example, you may want a recurring task that updates the database at the end of every business day.

In the current form, you will see:

• A pipeline name which has a default name that is dynamically generated, but can be easily changed if desired
• The extractor the pipeline will use, which should be tap-carbon-intensity
• The loader the pipeline will use, which should be target-sqlite
• Whether the transform step should be applied, which should be run
• The interval at which the pipeline should be run, which is set by default to be @once

All we need to do is click Save to start our new pipeline! The pipeline's log opens automatically and you can check the pipeline running and what Meltano does behind the scenes to extract and load the data. You should see a spinning icon that indicates that the pipeline is not completed:

Once it's complete, the indicator will disappear and you should be able to see the final results of the extraction:

You can click the Analyze button to select a model to analyze. The same Analyze button is available inline within your pipeline. If you close the log and go back to the Pipelines page you can check the log of any past pipeline by clicking the Log button next to it:

Congratulations! Now that you have connected a data source, configured a target database, and run a successful pipeline for the dataset, we are now ready to analyze the data!

# Select a data model

There are currently three ways to select a data model for analyzing, exploring, and report building:

• Main navigation's Analyze dropdown (all data models)
• Each pipeline's inline Analyze button (contextual data models)
• Log modal's Analyze button (contextual data models)

Selecting a data model from one of these options takes us to the next step.

# Analyze the data

The Analyze page contains an interactive user interface to allow you to dynamically build queries and visualize your data. By default, it will run a standard report.

Now, you can explore and analyze the tap-carbon-intensity data by clicking on different Attributes in the Query side menu on the left hand side. This will trigger live changes to the SQL queries which will update the chart dynamically.

While exploring the Analyze page, you can also check out:

• Filters
• Different chart types which can be found in the upper right
• Exploring table data and sorting data via column properties like ascending or descending

# Save a report

When we find an analysis that we want to reference in the future, we can easily do this by creating a report. This can be accomplished by clicking on the Save Report dropdown in the Analyze toolbar. This will open a dropdown with a default report name that is dynamically populated, but can be easily changed.

Once we click Save, we should see the upper left "Untitled Report" change to our new report name.

And with that, our analysis has been saved!

# Add a report to a dashboard

As you acquire more reports, you will probably want to organize them via dashboards. This can be done by clicking on the new Add to Dashboard dropdown in the toolbar.

Since we have never created a dashboard, click on New Dashboard, which will trigger a modal that contains a dynamically generated dashboard name that can be customized as desired.

Once we click Create, we can now verify that our report has been added to the Dashboard by clicking on the Add to Dashboard menu.

We can also visit the Dashboard directly by clicking on the Dashboard navigation item in the header, which shows our newly created Dashboard.

Once we select it, you should see a similar page to below:

# Next steps

And with that, you have now setup a complete end-to-end data solution with Meltano! 🎉

To learn about more Meltano recipes and functionality with our tutorials.