Orbital

Introduction

Getting started

Connect all your APIs & data sources dynamically, without writing integration code

Orbital automates integration for your microservices.

Get started right now, by spinning up Orbital on your machine

curl -fsSL https://start.orbitalhq.com | bash

Then visit http://localhost:9022 in your browser.

The script will set up everything you need and open Orbital automatically when it’s ready.

Your first run

The first time Orbital opens, you’ll be asked to sign in or create a free account - that’s how Orbital picks up its license.

Orbital then asks whether you’ve used it before. Choose New to Orbital for a guided setup: it takes about ten minutes, and walks you through creating a project and connecting your first data source. I’ve used Orbital before skips the guide and drops you straight into the workspace - you can come back to the guided setup later from the Get started card on the workspace home page.

The welcome screen on first run

The welcome screen on first run

The welcome screen on first run

The guided setup has three steps:

  1. Create a project. A project holds your data sources, their API specs and the semantic types that link them. Give it an organisation, a name and a version - together these form the package identifier that other projects use to depend on it. All three can be changed later in the project’s taxi.conf.
  2. Connect data sources. Point Orbital at an API spec, a database or a message topic. You can skip this step and add sources later from the Data sources page.
  3. Start exploring. Your project is in the catalog and ready to query: write your first query in the Code editor, browse the Catalog, or open Mesh to see how your sources link up.
Step 1 - creating a project

Step 1 - creating a project

Step 1 - creating a project
Step 2 - connecting data sources

Step 2 - connecting data sources

Step 2 - connecting data sources

When you’re done, you land on the workspace home page. It shows the health of your data sources, recent changes to your schemas, and shortcuts to create a query or connect another data source.

The workspace home page

The workspace home page

The workspace home page

Orbital’s URLs include the organisation and the workspace. A fresh install creates one of each, both called default, so the pages in these docs live under http://localhost:9022/default/default/.

What is Orbital?

Orbital is a data gateway that automates the integration, transformation and discovery of data from data sources (API’s, databases, message brokers) across your enterprise.

Orbital integrates on-the-fly, automatically adjusting as your data sources change.

This is powered by rich semantic schemas, which infer how data across your organisation links together, and automate the integration and discovery of data.

Quick Links

Once you have Orbital running locally, connect your microservices, and start querying for data

Connecting data sources

Connect your APIs, Databases and Message Queues to Orbital.

Querying

Query for data through Orbital's API, and let Orbital handle the integration plumbing for you.

Follow a guide

A handful of guides to help get productive with Orbital

Head to production

Deploy Orbital on your Kubernetes cluster or using Docker Compose

What the install script does

The start script is a small wrapper around our Docker Compose file. It handles the setup steps that would otherwise trip you up, so you can get straight to working with Orbital.

Specifically, it:

  • Detects your OS (Mac, Linux or Windows), so it can fetch the right Docker Compose file - this matters because our local testing tool, Nebula, needs OS-specific networking to launch Docker containers
  • Creates the directories Orbital writes to (orbital_data, prometheus_data) before Docker does, so that files Orbital creates are owned by you, and editable from your IDE without permission errors
  • Creates a .env file containing your UID and GID, so the Orbital container runs as you, rather than as root
  • Downloads the OS-specific Docker Compose file from start.orbitalhq.com/compose.yml, saving it as docker-compose.yml
  • Runs docker compose pull and docker compose up -d, then waits for Orbital’s health endpoint to be ready before opening it in your browser

When Orbital opens, you’ll be asked to sign in or create a free account - that’s how Orbital picks up your license. See Authentication for the details, including bringing your own identity provider.

You can also pass a project to clone on first launch:

curl -fsSL https://start.orbitalhq.com | bash -s -- https://github.com/your/repo

The script’s header explains what Orbital is, exactly what the script does, and links to further resources - so it’s worth reading before you run it (curl -fsSL https://start.orbitalhq.com). It’s also written as the entry point for AI agents setting Orbital up on a user’s behalf.

If you’d prefer to do this yourself, you can download the Docker Compose file directly from start.orbitalhq.com/compose.yml - the script’s header has notes on the manual setup.

Getting help

Stuck? Need help? Have an idea? We’d love to hear from your.

You can connect with the Orbital team in a number of ways