CREATE STREAM AS SELECT statement in ksqlDB for Confluent Platform

Synopsis

CREATE [OR REPLACE] STREAM stream_name
  [WITH ( property_name = expression [, ...] )]
  AS SELECT  select_expr [, ...]
  FROM from_stream
  [[ LEFT | FULL | INNER ]
      JOIN [join_table | join_stream]
          [WITHIN [<size> <timeunit> | (<before_size> <timeunit>, <after_size> <timeunit>)]
          [GRACE PERIOD <grace_size> <timeunit>]]
      ON join_criteria]*
  [ WHERE condition ]
  [PARTITION BY column_name]
  EMIT CHANGES;

Description

Create a new materialized stream view with a corresponding new Kafka sink topic, and stream the result of the query into the sink topic. The new stream is said to be a persistent query and is derived from the from_stream.

In ksqlDB, you issue a persistent query to transform one stream into another using a SQL programming model. You derive a new stream from an existing one by selecting and manipulating the columns you’re interested in.

Creating a stream from a query creates a new backing topic with the specified number of partitions, if the topic doesn’t exist already.

Important

Registering a stream on a query result with CREATE STREAM AS SELECT is distinct from using the CREATE STREAM statement, which registers a stream on a Kafka source topic.

The stream metadata, like the column layout, serialization scheme, and other information, is placed into ksqlDB’s command topic, which is its internal cluster communication channel.

When you create a persistent query, ksqlDB assigns a generated name based on the name you provide. For example, if you create a stream named “pageviews_enriched”, ksqlDB might assign an ID like “CSAS_PAGEVIEWS_ENRICHED_1”. The prepended string, “CSAS”, is an acronym for CREATE STREAM AS SELECT.

ksqlDB reads rows from the stream partitions that the query selects from. As each row passes through the persistent query, the transformation logic is applied to create a new row. Reading a record from Kafka doesn’t delete it. Instead, you receive a copy of it.

When you write ksqlDB programs, you chain streams and tables together. You create a path that your data traverses, with each step in the path performing a step of processing. ksqlDB handles the mechanics of how your data propagates through the chain.

Tip

See CREATE STREAM AS SELECT in action:

• Detect Unusual Credit Card Activity
• Notify Passengers of Flight Updates
• Detect and analyze SSH attacks

Joins

Joins to streams can use any stream column. If the join criteria is not the key column of the stream, ksqlDB repartitions the data internally.

Important

Kafka guarantees the relative order of any two messages from one source partition only if they are also both in the same partition after the repartition. Otherwise, Kafka is likely to interleave messages. The use case will determine if these ordering guarantees are acceptable.

Joins to tables must use the table’s PRIMARY KEY as the join criteria. Non-key joins aren’t supported. For more information, see Joining Collections.

For more information on how to partition your data correctly for joins, see Partition Data to Enable Joins.

Note

• Partitioning streams and tables is especially important for stateful or otherwise intensive queries. For more information, see Parallelization.
• Once a stream is created, you can’t change the number of partitions. To change the partition count, you must drop the stream and create it again.

For stream-stream joins, you must specify a WITHIN clause for matching records that both occur within a specified time interval. For valid time units, see Time Units.

The PARTITION BY clause, if supplied, is applied to the source after any JOIN or WHERE clauses, and before the SELECT clause, in much the same way as GROUP BY.

The key of the resulting stream is determined by the following rules, in order of priority:

1. If the query has a PARTITION BY clause, the resulting number of key columns matches the number of expressions in the PARTITION BY clause. For each expression:
   1. If the PARTITION BY expression is a single source-column reference, the corresponding key column matches the name, type, and contents of the source column.
   2. If the PARTITION BY expression is a reference to a field within a STRUCT-type column, the corresponding key column matches the name, type, and contents of the STRUCT field.
   3. If the PARTITION BY expression is any other expression, the key column has a system-generated name, unless you provide an alias in the projection, and matches the type and contents of the result of the expression.
2. If the query has a join. For more information, see Join Synthetic Key Columns.
3. Otherwise, the key matches the name, unless you provide an alias in the projection, and type of the source stream’s key.

The projection must include all columns required in the result, including any key columns.

Serialization

For supported serialization formats, ksqlDB can integrate with Confluent Schema Registry.

ksqlDB registers the key and/or value schemas of the new stream with Schema Registry automatically. Key and value schemas are registered under the subjects <topic-name>-key and <topic-name>-value, respectively.

ksqlDB can also use Schema Inference With ID to enable using a physical schema for data serialization.

Stream properties

Use the WITH clause to specify details about your stream.

Important

In join queries, property values are taken from the left-most stream or table of the join.

The WITH clause supports the following properties.

FORMAT

The serialization format of both the message key and value in the topic. For supported formats, see Serialization Formats.

Note

• To use the Avro, Protobuf, or JSON_SR formats, you must enable Schema Registry and set ksql.schema.registry.url in the ksqlDB Server configuration file. For more information, see Configure ksqlDB for Avro, Protobuf, and JSON schemas.
• The JSON format doesn’t require Schema Registry to be enabled.
• Avro and Protobuf field names are not case sensitive in ksqlDB. This matches the ksqlDB column name behavior.

You can’t use the FORMAT property with the KEY_FORMAT or VALUE_FORMAT properties in the same CREATE STREAM AS SELECT statement.

KAFKA_TOPIC

The name of the Kafka topic that backs the stream.

If KAFKA_TOPIC isn’t set, the name of the stream in upper case is used as the topic name.

KEY_FORMAT

The serialization format of the message key in the topic. For supported formats, see Serialization Formats.

If this property is not set, the format from the left-most input stream or table is used.

In join queries, the KEY_FORMAT value is taken from the left-most stream or table.

You can’t use the KEY_FORMAT property with the FORMAT property in the same CREATE STREAM AS SELECT statement.

KEY_PROTOBUF_NULLABLE_REPRESENTATION

In the default configuration, primitive fields in protobuf do not distinguish null from the default values (such as zero, empty string). To enable the use of a protobuf schema that can make this distinction, set KEY_PROTOBUF_NULLABLE_REPRESENTATION to either OPTIONAL or WRAPPER. The schema will be used to serialize keys for the stream created by this CREATE statement. For more details, see the corresponding section in the Serialization Formats documentation.

KEY_SCHEMA_ID

The schema ID of the key schema in Schema Registry.

The schema is used for schema inference and data serialization.

For more information, see Schema Inference With Schema ID.

PARTITIONS

The number of partitions in the backing topic.

If PARTITIONS isn’t set, the number of partitions of the input stream is used.

In join queries, the PARTITIONS value is taken from the left-most stream or table.

You can’t change the number of partitions on an existing stream. To change the partition count, you must drop the stream and create it again.

REPLICAS

The number of replicas in the backing topic.

If REPLICAS isn’t set, the number of replicas of the input stream or table is used.

In join queries, the REPLICAS value is taken from the left-most stream or table.

RETENTION_MS

Note

Available starting in version 0.28.3-RC7.

The retention specified in milliseconds in the backing topic.

If RETENTION_MS isn’t set, the retention of the input stream is used. But in the case of inheritance, the CREATE STREAM declaration is not the source of the RETENTION_MS value.

In join queries, the RETENTION_MS value is taken from the left-most stream.

You can’t change the retention on an existing stream. To change the retention, you have these options:

• Drop the stream and the topic it’s registered on with the DROP STREAM and DELETE TOPIC statements, and create them again.
• Drop the stream with the DROP STREAM statement, update the topic with retention.ms=<new-value> and register the stream again with CREATE STREAM WITH (RETENTION_MS=<new-value>).
• For a stream that was created with CREATE STREAM WITH (RETENTION_MS=<old-value>), update the topic with retention.ms=<new-value>, and update the stream with the CREATE OR REPLACE STREAM WITH (RETENTION_MS=<new-value>) statement.

TIMESTAMP

Sets a column within the stream’s schema to be used as the default source of ROWTIME for any downstream queries.

Timestamps have an accuracy of milliseconds.

Downstream queries that use time-based operations, like windowing, process records in this stream based on the timestamp in this column. The column is used to set the timestamp on any records emitted to Kafka.

If not provided, the ROWTIME of the source stream is used.

This doesn’t affect the processing of the query that populates this stream. For example, given the following statement:

CREATE STREAM foo WITH (TIMESTAMP='t2') AS
  SELECT * FROM bar
  WINDOW TUMBLING (size 10 seconds);
  EMIT CHANGES;

The window into which each row of bar is placed is determined by bar’s ROWTIME, not t2.

TIMESTAMP_FORMAT

Use with the TIMESTAMP property to specify the type and format of the timestamp column.

• If set, the TIMESTAMP column must be of type varchar and have a format that can be parsed with the Java DateTimeFormatter.
• If not set, the ksqlDB timestamp column must be of type bigint or timestamp.

If your timestamp format has characters that require single quotes, escape them with successive single quotes, '', for example: 'yyyy-MM-dd''T''HH:mm:ssX'.

For more information, see Timestamp Formats.

VALUE_DELIMITER

Set the delimiter string to use when VALUE_FORMAT is set to DELIMITED.

You can use a single character as a delimiter. The default is ','.

For space-delimited and tab-delimited values, use the special values SPACE or TAB instead of the actual space or tab characters.

VALUE_FORMAT

The serialization format of the message value in the topic. For supported formats, see Serialization Formats.

If this property is not set, the format from the left-most input stream or table is used.

In join queries, the VALUE_FORMAT value is taken from the left-most stream or table.

You can’t use the VALUE_FORMAT property with the FORMAT property in the same CREATE STREAM AS SELECT statement.

VALUE_PROTOBUF_NULLABLE_REPRESENTATION

In the default configuration, primitive fields in protobuf do not distinguish null from the default values (such as zero, empty string). To enable the use of a protobuf schema that can make this distinction, set VALUE_PROTOBUF_NULLABLE_REPRESENTATION to either OPTIONAL or WRAPPER. The schema will be used to serialize values for the stream created by this CREATE statement. For more details, see the corresponding section in the Serialization Formats documentation.

VALUE_SCHEMA_ID

The schema ID of the value schema in Schema Registry. The schema is used for schema inference and data serialization. For more information, see Schema Inference With Schema ID.

WRAP_SINGLE_VALUE

Specifies how ksqlDB deserializes the value of messages in the backing topic that contain only a single column.

• If set to true, ksqlDB expects the column to have been serialized as a named column within a record.
• If set to false, ksqlDB expects the column to have been serialized as an anonymous value.
• If not supplied, the system default is used, defined by the ksql.persistence.wrap.single.values configuration property and defaulting to true.

Note

• Be careful when you have a single-column schema where the value can be NULL, because NULL values have a special meaning in ksqlDB.
• Supplying this property for formats that don’t support wrapping, for example DELIMITED, or when the value schema has multiple columns, causes an error.

For more information, see Single field unwrapping.

Examples

-- Create a view that filters an existing stream:
CREATE STREAM filtered AS
   SELECT
     a,
     few,
     columns
   FROM source_stream
   EMIT CHANGES;

-- Create a view that enriches a stream with a table lookup:
CREATE STREAM enriched AS
   SELECT
      cs.*,
      u.name,
      u.classification,
      u.level
   FROM clickstream cs
      JOIN users u ON u.id = cs.userId
   EMIT CHANGES;

-- Create a view that enriches a stream with a table lookup with value serialization schema
-- defined by VALUE_SCHEMA_ID:
CREATE STREAM enriched WITH (
    VALUE_SCHEMA_ID = 1
  ) AS
  SELECT
     cs.*,
     u.name,
     u.classification,
     u.level
  FROM clickstream cs
    JOIN users u ON u.id = cs.userId
  EMIT CHANGES;