Question from College Student

[Andrew Robinson via dev <de...@airflow.apache.org>]

Hello!

I'm a student at WGU doing the Master's of Data Analytics program.

I'm in a course that is currently learning Airflow (it's all online, and the resources are sparse). We have an assignment to stage data in an S3 bucket to Redshift for analysis. I'm having trouble understanding how to do that and what code is necessary to accomplish that. It's based on a Udacity course, and the course itself seems to bounce around different versions of Airflow, and never really divulges why the code works the way that it does. There are indeed examples of staging data to Redshift, but the examples don't really correlate with what the assignment dictates, and I don't completely understand the underlying principle behind why it works the way that it does.

The assignment was given with some of the framework laid out, but most of the implementation of the custom operators is up to us. If you can find it in your heart to help point me in the right direction, that would be much appreciated!


Andrew Robinson

Andy, He/Him

Student ID Number: 012649771

Master's of Data Analytics, Start Date 5/1/2025

Odai Baylor

Mobile: 606-975-1148 E.S.T.

arobin14@wgu.edu

Re: Question from College Student

[Kenten Danas via dev <de...@airflow.apache.org>]

Hey Andrew,

I would recommend asking questions like this on the Airflow Slack:
https://apache-airflow-slack.herokuapp.com/.

The dev list is used for announcements and discussions on the development
of Airflow, but Slack has many users that may have done similar things to
what you're describing and are usually helpful in answering questions.

More broadly, I'm not sure if it's helpful for your assignment at all, but
Astronomer does have a guide on using Redshift operators, which could maybe
help you get a deeper understanding of how it works:
https://www.astronomer.io/docs/learn/airflow-redshift.

- Kenten

On Wed, Sep 10, 2025 at 6:21 PM Andrew Robinson via dev <
dev@airflow.apache.org> wrote:

> Hello!
>
> I'm a student at WGU doing the Master's of Data Analytics program.
>
> I'm in a course that is currently learning Airflow (it's all online, and
> the resources are sparse). We have an assignment to stage data in an S3
> bucket to Redshift for analysis. I'm having trouble understanding how to do
> that and what code is necessary to accomplish that. It's based on a Udacity
> course, and the course itself seems to bounce around different versions of
> Airflow, and never really divulges why the code works the way that it does.
> There are indeed examples of staging data to Redshift, but the examples
> don't really correlate with what the assignment dictates, and I don't
> completely understand the underlying principle behind why it works the way
> that it does.
>
> The assignment was given with some of the framework laid out, but most of
> the implementation of the custom operators is up to us. If you can find it
> in your heart to help point me in the right direction, that would be much
> appreciated!
>
>
> Andrew Robinson
>
> Andy, He/Him
>
> Student ID Number: 012649771
>
> Master's of Data Analytics, Start Date 5/1/2025
>
> Odai Baylor
>
> Mobile: 606-975-1148 E.S.T.
>
> arobin14@wgu.edu
>
>