7.1 Introduction to triggers

Mage triggers are the orchestration mechanism that determines when and how your data pipelines execute. They provide automated execution capabilities that eliminate the need for manual pipeline runs, enabling reliable and scalable data operations. Triggers act as the scheduling and event-driven backbone of your data infrastructure.

Mage offers several trigger types to accommodate different execution patterns and business requirements:

1. Schedule triggers - Execute pipelines based on time-based schedules (cron expressions)

2. API triggers - Execute pipelines via HTTP requests for real-time processing

3. Streaming triggers - Execute streaming pipelines for continuous data processing

Triggers provide essential benefits for production data workflows:

• Automation: Eliminate manual intervention and reduce operational overhead

• Reliability: Ensure consistent execution timing and error handling

• Scalability: Handle multiple pipeline executions across different schedules

• Flexibility: Support various execution patterns from batch to real-time processing

• Monitoring: Track execution history and performance metrics

Understanding triggers is fundamental to building production-ready data pipelines that operate independently and scale with your organization's needs.