TiDB Cloud Quick Start

Estimated completion time: 20 minutes

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

In addition, you can try out TiDB features on TiDB Playground.

Step 1. Create a TiDB cluster

TiDB Serverless (Beta) is the best way to get started with TiDB Cloud. To create a TiDB Serverless cluster, take the following steps:

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

   You can either sign up with email and password so that you can manage your password using TiDB Cloud, or choose 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 creates a default TiDB Serverless cluster Cluster0 for you automatically.

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

   • To try creating a new TiDB Serverless cluster on your own, take the following operations:

     1. Click Create Cluster.
     2. On the Create Cluster page, Serverless is selected by default. Select a target region of 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 your data value.

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

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

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

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

   Note

   SQL queries generated by AI are not 100% accurate and might still need your further tweak.

4. Run SQL queries.

   • macOS
   • Windows/Linux

   For macOS:

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

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

   • 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, to run it, press Ctrl + Enter or click Run.

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

   • 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 see the query logs and results immediately at the bottom of the page.

Step 3. Try interactive tutorials

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

1. Click ? in the lower-right corner of the console and click Interactive Tutorials.
2. In the tutorials list, select a tutorial card to start. For example, Steam Game Stats.
3. Select 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. After the sample data is imported, follow the on-screen instructions to complete the tutorial.

What's next

• For how to connect to your cluster via different methods, see Connect to a TiDB 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 cluster to create a TiDB Dedicated cluster.