Real-Time Context Engine Support and Limitations in Confluent Cloud

The Real-Time Context Engine supports Basic, Standard, Enterprise, and Dedicated clusters on AWS, using Avro, Protobuf, or JSON Schema data. Some data types and query patterns have restrictions.

Supported environments

The Real-Time Context Engine is available on the following cluster types on AWS:

Basic
Standard
Enterprise
Dedicated

For the current list of supported regions, see Cloud Regions.

Supported data types

You can enable the Real-Time Context Engine on topics that use the following data types in their schema. The Real-Time Context Engine supports Avro, Protobuf, and JSON Schema formats.

Numeric types

The following numeric types are supported:

BOOLEAN
TINYINT
SMALLINT
INT
BIGINT
FLOAT
DOUBLE
DECIMAL

String and binary types

The following string and binary types are supported:

CHAR
VARCHAR
BINARY
VARBINARY

Temporal types

The following temporal types are supported:

DATE
TIME (precision 0 only)
TIMESTAMP (precision 0-6)
TIMESTAMP_LTZ (precision 0-6)

Note

TIMESTAMP and TIMESTAMP_LTZ with precision 7-9 are not supported in Avro or JSON Schema formats.

Complex types

The following complex types are supported:

ARRAY
MAP — Note that MAP types with nullable non-character keys are not supported.
ROW (also known as STRUCT)

Unsupported data types

The Real-Time Context Engine does not support the following data types:

INTERVAL YEAR TO MONTH
INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND
MULTISET
TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE
RAW

If your topic schema uses an unsupported data type, you cannot enable the Real-Time Context Engine on that topic.

Data model requirements

To enable the Real-Time Context Engine on a topic, the topic must meet the following requirements:

The topic must have a registered schema in Avro, Protobuf, or JSON Schema format.
The schema must define a primary key.

Query limitations

The Real-Time Context Engine supports read-only queries only. The following operations are not supported:

Aggregates (COUNT, SUM, AVG, MIN, MAX)
GROUP BY
Joins
Subqueries
Set operations (UNION, EXCEPT, INTERSECT)
DDL statements (CREATE, ALTER, DROP)
DML statements (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE)

For query limits including maximum rows, timeout, and rate limits, see Query limits.

Schema changes

Changing the schema for a topic that has the Real-Time Context Engine enabled causes agents that query the topic to receive errors. To resolve the issue, contact Confluent Support.

Private networking

The Real-Time Context Engine supports private networking on AWS.

Warning

Cross-environment and cross-network access

With private networking enabled, topics enabled with the Real-Time Context Engine might be accessible across environments and private network boundaries within your organization. This is a temporary limitation. Review your private network topology and environment isolation model before enabling the feature.

You can connect to the Real-Time Context Engine endpoint by using the following networking options:

The following table shows the endpoint patterns for different networking and cluster type combinations.

Networking	DNS	Cluster Type	Endpoint
PrivateLink	Private	Enterprise (PrivateLink Gateway)	`mcp.$region.$cloud.private.confluent.cloud`
PrivateLink	Private	Dedicated	`mcp.dom$id.$region.$cloud.private.confluent.cloud`
PrivateLink	Public	Dedicated	`mcp-$nid.$region.$cloud.glb.confluent.cloud`
VPC Peering / Transit Gateway w/ /16 CIDR	Public	Dedicated	`mcp-$nid.$region.$cloud.confluent.cloud`
VPC Peering / Transit Gateway w/ /27 CIDRs	Public	Dedicated	`mcp-$nid.$region.$cloud.glb.confluent.cloud`