TiDB Cloud Quick Start

Estimated completion time: 20 minutes

This tutorial guides you through an easy way to get started with TiDB Cloud. You can also follow the step-by-step tutorials on the Getting Started page in the TiDB Cloud console.

Additionally, you can try out TiDB features on TiDB Playground.

Step 1: Create a TiDB cluster

TiDB Serverless is the best way to get started with TiDB Cloud. To create a TiDB Serverless cluster, follow these steps:

1. If you do not have a TiDB Cloud account, click here to sign up.

   You can sign up with your email and password to manage your password using TiDB Cloud, or choose to sign in with your Google, GitHub, or Microsoft account for single sign-on (SSO) to TiDB Cloud.

2. Log in to your TiDB Cloud account.

   The Clusters page is displayed by default.

3. For new sign-up users, TiDB Cloud automatically creates a default TiDB Serverless cluster named Cluster0 for you.

   • To instantly try out TiDB Cloud features with this default cluster, proceed to Step 2: Try AI-powered Chat2Query (beta).

   • To create a new TiDB Serverless cluster on your own, follow these steps:

     1. Click Create Cluster.
     2. On the Create Cluster page, Serverless is selected by default. Select the target region for your cluster, update the default cluster name if necessary, and then click Create. Your TiDB Serverless cluster will be created in approximately 30 seconds.

Step 2: Try AI-powered Chat2Query (beta)

TiDB Cloud is powered by AI. You can use Chat2Query (beta), an AI-powered SQL editor in the TiDB Cloud console, to maximize the value of your data.

In Chat2Query, you can either simply type -- followed by your instructions to let AI automatically generate SQL queries, or write SQL queries manually and run them against databases without using a terminal.

1. On the Clusters page, click on a cluster name to go to its overview page, and then click Chat2Query in the left navigation pane.

2. To try the AI capacity of TiDB Cloud, follow the on-screen instructions to allow PingCAP and OpenAI to use your code snippets for research and service improvement, and then click Save and Get Started.

3. In the editor, you can either simply type -- followed by your instructions to let AI automatically generate SQL queries, or write SQL queries manually.

   Note

   SQL queries generated by AI are not 100% accurate and might still require further tweaking.

4. Run the SQL queries.

   • macOS
   • Windows/Linux

   For macOS:

   • If you have only one query in the editor, press ⌘ + Enter or click Run to execute it.

   • If you have multiple queries in the editor, select the lines of the target queries with your cursor, and then press ⌘ + Enter or click Run to execute them sequentially.

   • To run all queries in the editor sequentially, press ⇧ + ⌘ + Enter, or select the lines of all queries with your cursor and click Run.

   For Windows or Linux:

   • If you have only one query in the editor, press Ctrl + Enter or click Run to execute it.

   • If you have multiple queries in the editor, select the lines of the target queries with your cursor, and then press Ctrl + Enter or click Run to execute them sequentially.

   • To run all queries in the editor sequentially, press Shift + Ctrl + Enter, or select the lines of all queries with your cursor and click Run.

After running the queries, you can immediately see the query logs and results at the bottom of the page.

Step 3: Try interactive tutorials

TiDB Cloud offers interactive tutorials with carefully crafted sample datasets to help you quickly get started with TiDB Cloud. You can try these tutorials to learn how to use TiDB Cloud for high-performance data analytics.

1. Click on the ? icon in the lower-right corner of the console and select Interactive Tutorials.
2. In the tutorials list, select a tutorial card to start, such as Steam Game Stats.
3. Choose a TiDB Serverless cluster that you want to use for the tutorial, and click Import Dataset. The import process might take approximately one minute.
4. Once the sample data is imported, follow the on-screen instructions to complete the tutorial.

What's next

• To learn how to connect to your cluster using different methods, see Connect to a TiDB Serverless cluster.
• For more information about how to use Chat2Query to explore your data, see Chat2Query.
• For TiDB SQL usage, see Explore SQL with TiDB.
• For production use with the benefits of cross-zone high availability, horizontal scaling, and HTAP, see Create a TiDB Dedicated cluster.