Kafka External Stream

You can read data from Apache Kafka (as well as Confluent Cloud, or Redpanda) in Timeplus Proton with External Stream. Combining with Materialized View and Target Stream, you can also write data to Apache Kafka with External Stream.

CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM

In Timeplus Proton, the external stream supports Kafka API as the only type. In Timeplus Enterprise, it also supports the connection to the other Timeplus deployment.

To create an external stream:

CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM [IF NOT EXISTS] stream_name
    (<col_name1> <col_type>)
SETTINGS
    type='kafka',
    brokers='ip:9092',
    topic='..',
    security_protocol='..',
    username='..',
    password='..',
    sasl_mechanism='..',
    data_format='..',
    kafka_schema_registry_url='..',
    kafka_schema_registry_credentials='..',
    ssl_ca_cert_file='..',
    ss_ca_pem='..',
    skip_ssl_cert_check=..

The supported values for security_protocol are:

• PLAINTEXT: when this option is omitted, this is the default value.
• SASL_SSL: when this value is set, username and password should be specified.
  • If you need to specify own SSL certification file, add another setting ssl_ca_cert_file='/ssl/ca.pem' New in Proton 1.5.5, you can also put the full content of the pem file as a string in the ssl_ca_pem setting if you don't want to, or cannot use a file path, such as on Timeplus Cloud or in Docker/Kubernetes environments.
  • Skipping the SSL certification verification can be done via SETTINGS skip_ssl_cert_check=true.

The supported values for sasl_mechanism are:

• PLAIN: when you set security_protocol to SASL_SSL, this is the default value for sasl_mechanism.
• SCRAM-SHA-256
• SCRAM-SHA-512

The supported values for data_format are:

• JSONEachRow: each Kafka message can be a single JSON document, or each row is a JSON document. Learn More.
• CSV: less commonly used. Learn More.
• ProtobufSingle: for single Protobuf message per Kafka message
• Protobuf: there could be multiple Protobuf messages in a single Kafka message.
• Avro: added in Proton 1.5.2
• RawBLOB: the default value. Read/write Kafka message as plain text.

info

For examples to connect to various Kafka API compatitable message platforms, please check this doc.

Define columns

Single column to read from Kafka

If the message in Kafka topic is in plain text format or JSON, you can create an external stream with only a raw column in string type.

Example:

CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM ext_github_events
         (raw string)
SETTINGS type='kafka',
         brokers='localhost:9092',
         topic='github_events'

Then use query time JSON extraction functions or shortcut to access the values, e.g. raw:id.

Write to Kafka in Plain Text

You can write plain text messages to Kafka topics with an external stream with a single column.

CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM ext_github_events
         (raw string)
SETTINGS type='kafka',
         brokers='localhost:9092',
         topic='github_events'

Then use either INSERT INTO <stream_name> VALUES (v), or Ingest REST API, or set it as the target stream for a materialized view to write message to the Kafka topic. The actual data_format value is RawBLOB but this can be omitted. By default one_message_per_row is true.

info

Since Timeplus Proton 1.5.11, a new setting kafka_max_message_size is available. When multiple rows can be written to the same Kafka message, this setting will control how many data will be put in a Kafka message, ensuring it won't exceed the kafka_max_message_size limit.

Multiple columns to read from Kafka

If the keys in the JSON message never change, or you don't care about the new columns, you can also create the external stream with multiple columns.

You can pick up some top level keys in the JSON as columns, or all possible keys as columns.

Please note the behaviors are changed in recent versions, based on user feedback:

Version	Default Behavior	How to overwrite
1.4.2 or above	Say there are 5 top level key/value pairs in JSON, you can define 5 or less than 5 columns in the external stream. Data will be read properly.	If you don't want to read new events with unexpected columns, set input_format_skip_unknown_fields=false in the CREATE DDL.
1.3.24 to 1.4.1	Say there are 5 top level key/value pairs in JSON, you can need to define 5 columns to read them all. Or define less than 5 columns in the DDL, and make sure to add input_format_skip_unknown_fields=true in each SELECT query settings, otherwise no search result will be returned.	In each SELECT query, you can specify the setting input_format_skip_unknown_fields=true|false.
1.3.23 or older	You have to define a single string column for the entire JSON document and apply query time JSON parsing to extract fields.	N/A

Example:

CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM ext_github_events
         (actor string,
          created_at string,
          id string,
          payload string,
          repo string,
          type string
         )
SETTINGS type='kafka',
         brokers='localhost:9092',
         topic='github_events',
         data_format='JSONEachRow'

If there are nested complex JSON in the message, you can define the column as a string type. Actually any JSON value can be saved in a string column.

info

Protobuf messages can be read with all or partial columns. Please check this page.

Multiple columns to write to Kafka

To write data via Kafka API, you can choose different data formats:

JSONEachRow

You can use data_format='JSONEachRow',one_message_per_row=true to inform Proton to write each event as a JSON document. The columns of the external stream will be converted to keys in the JSON documents. For example:

CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM target(
    _tp_time datetime64(3),
    url string,
    method string,
    ip string)
    SETTINGS type='kafka',
             brokers='redpanda:9092',
             topic='masked-fe-event',
             data_format='JSONEachRow',
             one_message_per_row=true;

The messages will be generated in the specific topic as

{
"_tp_time":"2023-10-29 05:36:21.957"
"url":"https://www.nationalweb-enabled.io/methodologies/killer/web-readiness"
"method":"POST"
"ip":"c4ecf59a9ec27b50af9cc3bb8289e16c"
}

info

Please note, by default multiple JSON documents will be inserted to the same Kafka message. One JSON document each row/line. Such default behavior aims to get the maximum writing performance to Kafka/Redpanda. But you need to make sure the downstream applications are able to properly split the JSON documents per Kafka message.

If you need a valid JSON per each Kafka message, instead of a JSONL, please set one_message_per_row=true e.g.

CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM target(_tp_time datetime64(3), url string, ip string)
SETTINGS type='kafka', brokers='redpanda:9092', topic='masked-fe-event',
         data_format='JSONEachRow',one_message_per_row=true

The default value of one_message_per_row, if not specified, is false for data_format='JSONEachRow' and true for data_format='RawBLOB'.

Since Timeplus Proton 1.5.11, a new setting kafka_max_message_size is available. When multiple rows can be written to the same Kafka message, this setting will control how many data will be put in a Kafka message and when to create new Kafka message, ensuring each message won't exceed the kafka_max_message_size limit.

CSV

You can use data_format='CSV' to inform Proton to write each event as a JSON document. The columns of the external stream will be converted to keys in the JSON documents. For example:

CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM target(
    _tp_time datetime64(3),
    url string,
    method string,
    ip string)
    SETTINGS type='kafka',
             brokers='redpanda:9092',
             topic='masked-fe-event',
             data_format='CSV';

The messages will be generated in the specific topic as

"2023-10-29 05:35:54.176","https://www.nationalwhiteboard.info/sticky/recontextualize/robust/incentivize","PUT","3eaf6372e909e033fcfc2d6a3bc04ace"

ProtobufSingle

You can either define the Protobuf Schema in Proton, or specify the Kafka Schema Registry when you create the external stream.

Avro

Starting from Proton 1.5.2, you can use Avro format when you specify the Kafka Schema Registry when you create the external stream.

Read/Write Kafka Message Key

For each message in the Kafka topic, the value is critical for sure. The key is optional but could carry important meta data.

_message_key

warning

_message_key is deprecated since Timeplus Proton 1.5.15 and timeplusd 2.3.10. Please use _tp_message_key

From Timeplus Proton 1.5.4 to 1.5.14, it supports _message_key as a virtual column in Kafka external streams. If you run SELECT * FROM ext_stream, such virtual column won't be queried. You need to explicitly select the column to retrieve the message key, e.g. SELECT _message_key, * FROM ext_stream.

To write the message key and value, you need to set the message_key in the CREATE DDL. It is an expression that returns a string value, the values return by the expression will be used as the key for each message.

Examples:

-- use a column
CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM example_one (
  one string,
  two int32
) SETTINGS type='kafka',...,message_key='one';

-- use a complex expression
CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM example_two (
  one string,
  two int32
) SETTINGS type='kafka',...,message_key='split_by_string(\',\', one)[1]';

message_key can be used together with sharding_expr(which specify the target partition number in the Kafka topic), and sharding_expr will take higher priority.

_tp_message_key

Based on user feedback, we introduced a better way to read or write the message key. Starting from timeplusd 2.3.10, you can define the _tp_message_key column when you create the external stream. This new approach provides more intuitive and flexible way to write any content as the message key, not necessarily mapping to a specify column or a set of columns.

For example:

CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM foo (
    id int32,
    name string,
    _tp_message_key string
) SETTINGS type='kafka',...;

You can insert any data to the Kafka topic.

When insert a row to the stream like:

INSERT INTO foo(id,name,_tp_message_key) VALUES (1, 'John', 'some-key');

'some-key' will be used for the message key for the Kafka message (and it will be excluded from the message body, so the message will be {"id": 1, "name": "John"} for the above SQL).

When doing a SELECT query, the message key will be populated to the _tp_message_key column as well. SELECT * FROM foo will return 'some-key' for the _tp_message_key message.

_tp_message_key support the following types: uint8, uint16, uint32, uint64, int8, int16, int32, int64, bool, float32, float64, string, and fixed_string.

_tp_message_key also support nullable. Thus we can create an external stream with optional message key. For example:

CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM foo (
    id int32,
    name string,
    _tp_message_key nullable(string) default null
) SETTINGS type='kafka',...;

DROP EXTERNAL STREAM

DROP EXTERNAL STREAM [IF EXISTS] stream_name

Query Kafka Data with SQL

You can run streaming SQL on the external stream, e.g.

SELECT raw:timestamp, raw:car_id, raw:event FROM ext_stream WHERE raw:car_type in (1,2,3);
SELECT window_start, count() FROM tumble(ext_stream,to_datetime(raw:timestamp)) GROUP BY window_start;

Read existing messages

When you run SELECT raw FROM ext_stream , Proton will read the new messages in the topics, not the existing ones. If you need to read all existing messages, you can use the following settings:

SELECT raw FROM ext_stream SETTINGS seek_to='earliest'

Or the following SQL if you are running Proton 1.5.9 or above:

SELECT raw FROM table(ext_stream) WHERE ...

warning

Please avoid scanning all data via select * from table(ext_stream). Apply some filtering conditions, or run the optimized select count(*) from table(ext_stream) to get the number of current message count.

Read specified partitions

Starting from Proton 1.3.18, you can also read in specified Kafka partitions. By default, all partitions will be read. But you can also read from a single partition via the shards setting, e.g.

SELECT raw FROM ext_stream SETTINGS shards='0'

Or you can specify a set of partition ID, separated by comma, e.g.

SELECT raw FROM ext_stream SETTINGS shards='0,2'

Write to Kafka with SQL

You can use materialized views to write data to Kafka as an external stream, e.g.

-- read the topic via an external stream
CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM frontend_events(raw string)
                SETTINGS type='kafka',
                         brokers='redpanda:9092',
                         topic='owlshop-frontend-events';

-- create the other external stream to write data to the other topic
CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM target(
    _tp_time datetime64(3),
    url string,
    method string,
    ip string)
    SETTINGS type='kafka',
             brokers='redpanda:9092',
             topic='masked-fe-event',
             data_format='JSONEachRow',
             one_message_per_row=true;

-- setup the ETL pipeline via a materialized view
CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW mv INTO target AS
    SELECT now64() AS _tp_time,
           raw:requestedUrl AS url,
           raw:method AS method,
           lower(hex(md5(raw:ipAddress))) AS ip
    FROM frontend_events;

Tutorial with Docker Compose

Please check the tutorials:

• Query Kafka with SQL
• Streaming JOIN
• Streaming ETL

Properties for Kafka client

For more advanced use cases, you can specify customized properties while creating the external streams. Those properties will be passed to the underlying Kafka client, which is librdkafka.

For example:

CREATE EXTERNAL STREAM ext_github_events(raw string)
SETTINGS type='kafka',
         brokers='localhost:9092',
         topic='github_events',
         properties='message.max.bytes=1000000;message.timeout.ms=6000'

Please note, not all properties in librdkafka are supported. The following ones are accepted in Proton today. Please check the configuration guide of librdkafka for details.

(C/P legend: C = Consumer, P = Producer, * = both)

Property	C/P	Range	Default	Importance	Description
client.id	*		rdkafka	low	Client identifier. Type: string
message.max.bytes	*	1000 .. 1000000000	1000000	medium	Maximum Kafka protocol request message size. Due to differing framing overhead between protocol versions the producer is unable to reliably enforce a strict max message limit at produce time and may exceed the maximum size by one message in protocol ProduceRequests, the broker will enforce the the topic's max.message.bytes limit (see Apache Kafka documentation). Type: integer
message.copy.max.bytes	*	0 .. 1000000000	65535	low	Maximum size for message to be copied to buffer. Messages larger than this will be passed by reference (zero-copy) at the expense of larger iovecs. Type: integer
receive.message.max.bytes	*	1000 .. 2147483647	100000000	medium	Maximum Kafka protocol response message size. This serves as a safety precaution to avoid memory exhaustion in case of protocol hickups. This value must be at least fetch.max.bytes + 512 to allow for protocol overhead; the value is adjusted automatically unless the configuration property is explicitly set. Type: integer
max.in.flight.requests.per.connection	*	1 .. 1000000	1000000	low	Maximum number of in-flight requests per broker connection. This is a generic property applied to all broker communication, however it is primarily relevant to produce requests. In particular, note that other mechanisms limit the number of outstanding consumer fetch request per broker to one. Type: integer
max.in.flight	*	1 .. 1000000	1000000	low	Alias for max.in.flight.requests.per.connection: Maximum number of in-flight requests per broker connection. This is a generic property applied to all broker communication, however it is primarily relevant to produce requests. In particular, note that other mechanisms limit the number of outstanding consumer fetch request per broker to one. Type: integer
metadata.request.timeout.ms	*	10 .. 900000	60000	low	Non-topic request timeout in milliseconds. This is for metadata requests, etc. Type: integer
topic.metadata.refresh.interval.ms	*	-1 .. 3600000	300000	low	Period of time in milliseconds at which topic and broker metadata is refreshed in order to proactively discover any new brokers, topics, partitions or partition leader changes. Use -1 to disable the intervalled refresh (not recommended). If there are no locally referenced topics (no topic objects created, no messages produced, no subscription or no assignment) then only the broker list will be refreshed every interval but no more often than every 10s. Type: integer
metadata.max.age.ms	*	1 .. 86400000	900000	low	Metadata cache max age. Defaults to topic.metadata.refresh.interval.ms * 3 Type: integer
topic.metadata.refresh.fast.interval.ms	*	1 .. 60000	250	low	When a topic loses its leader a new metadata request will be enqueued with this initial interval, exponentially increasing until the topic metadata has been refreshed. This is used to recover quickly from transitioning leader brokers. Type: integer
topic.metadata.refresh.fast.cnt	*	0 .. 1000	10	low	DEPRECATED No longer used. Type: integer
topic.metadata.refresh.sparse	*	true, false	true	low	Sparse metadata requests (consumes less network bandwidth) Type: boolean
topic.metadata.propagation.max.ms	*	0 .. 3600000	30000	low	Apache Kafka topic creation is asynchronous and it takes some time for a new topic to propagate throughout the cluster to all brokers. If a client requests topic metadata after manual topic creation but before the topic has been fully propagated to the broker the client is requesting metadata from, the topic will seem to be non-existent and the client will mark the topic as such, failing queued produced messages with ERR__UNKNOWN_TOPIC. This setting delays marking a topic as non-existent until the configured propagation max time has passed. The maximum propagation time is calculated from the time the topic is first referenced in the client, e.g., on produce(). Type: integer
topic.blacklist	*			low	Topic blacklist, a comma-separated list of regular expressions for matching topic names that should be ignored in broker metadata information as if the topics did not exist. Type: pattern list
debug	*	generic, broker, topic, metadata, feature, queue, msg, protocol, cgrp, security, fetch, interceptor, plugin, consumer, admin, eos, mock, assignor, conf, all		medium	A comma-separated list of debug contexts to enable. Detailed Producer debugging: broker,topic,msg. Consumer: consumer,cgrp,topic,fetch Type: CSV flags
socket.timeout.ms	*	10 .. 300000	60000	low	Default timeout for network requests. Producer: ProduceRequests will use the lesser value of socket.timeout.ms and remaining message.timeout.ms for the first message in the batch. Consumer: FetchRequests will use fetch.wait.max.ms + socket.timeout.ms. Admin: Admin requests will use socket.timeout.ms or explicitly set rd_kafka_AdminOptions_set_operation_timeout() value. Type: integer
socket.blocking.max.ms	*	1 .. 60000	1000	low	DEPRECATED No longer used. Type: integer
socket.send.buffer.bytes	*	0 .. 100000000	0	low	Broker socket send buffer size. System default is used if 0. Type: integer
socket.receive.buffer.bytes	*	0 .. 100000000	0	low	Broker socket receive buffer size. System default is used if 0. Type: integer
socket.keepalive.enable	*	true, false	false	low	Enable TCP keep-alives (SO_KEEPALIVE) on broker sockets Type: boolean
socket.nagle.disable	*	true, false	false	low	Disable the Nagle algorithm (TCP_NODELAY) on broker sockets. Type: boolean
socket.max.fails	*	0 .. 1000000	1	low	Disconnect from broker when this number of send failures (e.g., timed out requests) is reached. Disable with 0. WARNING: It is highly recommended to leave this setting at its default value of 1 to avoid the client and broker to become desynchronized in case of request timeouts. NOTE: The connection is automatically re-established. Type: integer
broker.address.ttl	*	0 .. 86400000	1000	low	How long to cache the broker address resolving results (milliseconds). Type: integer
broker.address.family	*	any, v4, v6	any	low	Allowed broker IP address families: any, v4, v6 Type: enum value
reconnect.backoff.jitter.ms	*	0 .. 3600000	0	low	DEPRECATED No longer used. See reconnect.backoff.ms and reconnect.backoff.max.ms. Type: integer
reconnect.backoff.ms	*	0 .. 3600000	100	medium	The initial time to wait before reconnecting to a broker after the connection has been closed. The time is increased exponentially until reconnect.backoff.max.ms is reached. -25% to +50% jitter is applied to each reconnect backoff. A value of 0 disables the backoff and reconnects immediately. Type: integer
reconnect.backoff.max.ms	*	0 .. 3600000	10000	medium	The maximum time to wait before reconnecting to a broker after the connection has been closed. Type: integer
statistics.interval.ms	*	0 .. 86400000	0	high	librdkafka statistics emit interval. The application also needs to register a stats callback using rd_kafka_conf_set_stats_cb(). The granularity is 1000ms. A value of 0 disables statistics. Type: integer
log_level	*	0 .. 7	6	low	Logging level (syslog(3) levels) Type: integer
log.thread.name	*	true, false	true	low	Print internal thread name in log messages (useful for debugging librdkafka internals) Type: boolean
log.connection.close	*	true, false	true	low	Log broker disconnects. It might be useful to turn this off when interacting with 0.9 brokers with an aggressive connection.max.idle.ms value. Type: boolean
api.version.request.timeout.ms	*	1 .. 300000	10000	low	Timeout for broker API version requests. Type: integer
api.version.fallback.ms	*	0 .. 604800000	0	medium	Dictates how long the broker.version.fallback fallback is used in the case the ApiVersionRequest fails. NOTE: The ApiVersionRequest is only issued when a new connection to the broker is made (such as after an upgrade). Type: integer
broker.version.fallback	*		0.10.0	medium	Older broker versions (before 0.10.0) provide no way for a client to query for supported protocol features (ApiVersionRequest, see api.version.request) making it impossible for the client to know what features it may use. As a workaround a user may set this property to the expected broker version and the client will automatically adjust its feature set accordingly if the ApiVersionRequest fails (or is disabled). The fallback broker version will be used for api.version.fallback.ms. Valid values are: 0.9.0, 0.8.2, 0.8.1, 0.8.0. Any other value >= 0.10, such as 0.10.2.1, enables ApiVersionRequests. Type: string
ssl.cipher.suites	*			low	A cipher suite is a named combination of authentication, encryption, MAC and key exchange algorithm used to negotiate the security settings for a network connection using TLS or SSL network protocol. See manual page for ciphers(1) and `SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list(3). Type: string
ssl.curves.list	*			low	The supported-curves extension in the TLS ClientHello message specifies the curves (standard/named, or 'explicit' GF(2^k) or GF(p)) the client is willing to have the server use. See manual page for SSL_CTX_set1_curves_list(3). OpenSSL >= 1.0.2 required. Type: string
ssl.sigalgs.list	*			low	The client uses the TLS ClientHello signature_algorithms extension to indicate to the server which signature/hash algorithm pairs may be used in digital signatures. See manual page for SSL_CTX_set1_sigalgs_list(3). OpenSSL >= 1.0.2 required. Type: string
ssl.key.location	*			low	Path to client's private key (PEM) used for authentication. Type: string
ssl.key.password	*			low	Private key passphrase (for use with ssl.key.location and set_ssl_cert()) Type: string
ssl.key.pem	*			low	Client's private key string (PEM format) used for authentication. Type: string
ssl.certificate.location	*			low	Path to client's public key (PEM) used for authentication. Type: string
ssl.certificate.pem	*			low	Client's public key string (PEM format) used for authentication. Type: string
ssl.ca.location	*			low	File or directory path to CA certificate(s) for verifying the broker's key. Defaults: On Windows the system's CA certificates are automatically looked up in the Windows Root certificate store. On Mac OSX this configuration defaults to probe. It is recommended to install openssl using Homebrew, to provide CA certificates. On Linux install the distribution's ca-certificates package. If OpenSSL is statically linked or ssl.ca.location is set to probe a list of standard paths will be probed and the first one found will be used as the default CA certificate location path. If OpenSSL is dynamically linked the OpenSSL library's default path will be used (see OPENSSLDIR in openssl version -a). Type: string
ssl.ca.certificate.stores	*		Root	low	Comma-separated list of Windows Certificate stores to load CA certificates from. Certificates will be loaded in the same order as stores are specified. If no certificates can be loaded from any of the specified stores an error is logged and the OpenSSL library's default CA location is used instead. Store names are typically one or more of: MY, Root, Trust, CA. Type: string
ssl.crl.location	*			low	Path to CRL for verifying broker's certificate validity. Type: string
ssl.keystore.location	*			low	Path to client's keystore (PKCS#12) used for authentication. Type: string
ssl.keystore.password	*			low	Client's keystore (PKCS#12) password. Type: string
enable.ssl.certificate.verification	*	true, false	true	low	Enable OpenSSL's builtin broker (server) certificate verification. This verification can be extended by the application by implementing a certificate_verify_cb. Type: boolean
ssl.endpoint.identification.algorithm	*	none, https	none	low	Endpoint identification algorithm to validate broker hostname using broker certificate. https - Server (broker) hostname verification as specified in RFC2818. none - No endpoint verification. OpenSSL >= 1.0.2 required. Type: enum value
ssl.certificate.verify_cb	*			low	Callback to verify the broker certificate chain. Type: see dedicated API
sasl.kerberos.service.name	*		kafka	low	Kerberos principal name that Kafka runs as, not including /hostname@REALM Type: string
sasl.kerberos.principal	*		kafkaclient	low	This client's Kerberos principal name. (Not supported on Windows, will use the logon user's principal). Type: string
sasl.kerberos.kinit.cmd	*
sasl.kerberos.keytab	*			low	Path to Kerberos keytab file. This configuration property is only used as a variable in sasl.kerberos.kinit.cmd as ... -t "%{sasl.kerberos.keytab}". Type: string
sasl.kerberos.min.time.before.relogin	*	0 .. 86400000	60000	low	Minimum time in milliseconds between key refresh attempts. Disable automatic key refresh by setting this property to 0. Type: integer
sasl.password	*			high	SASL password for use with the PLAIN and SASL-SCRAM-.. mechanism Type: string
sasl.oauthbearer.config	*			low	SASL/OAUTHBEARER configuration. The format is implementation-dependent and must be parsed accordingly. The default unsecured token implementation (see https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7515#appendix-A.5) recognizes space-separated name=value pairs with valid names including principalClaimName, principal, scopeClaimName, scope, and lifeSeconds. The default value for principalClaimName is "sub", the default value for scopeClaimName is "scope", and the default value for lifeSeconds is 3600. The scope value is CSV format with the default value being no/empty scope. For example: principalClaimName=azp principal=admin scopeClaimName=roles scope=role1,role2 lifeSeconds=600. In addition, SASL extensions can be communicated to the broker via extension_NAME=value. For example: principal=admin extension_traceId=123 Type: string
enable.sasl.oauthbearer.unsecure.jwt	*	true, false	false	low	Enable the builtin unsecure JWT OAUTHBEARER token handler if no oauthbearer_refresh_cb has been set. This builtin handler should only be used for development or testing, and not in production. Type: boolean
partition.assignment.strategy	C		range,roundrobin	medium	The name of one or more partition assignment strategies. The elected group leader will use a strategy supported by all members of the group to assign partitions to group members. If there is more than one eligible strategy, preference is determined by the order of this list (strategies earlier in the list have higher priority). Cooperative and non-cooperative (eager) strategies must not be mixed. Available strategies: range, roundrobin, cooperative-sticky. Type: string
session.timeout.ms	C	1 .. 3600000	10000	high	Client group session and failure detection timeout. The consumer sends periodic heartbeats (heartbeat.interval.ms) to indicate its liveness to the broker. If no hearts are received by the broker for a group member within the session timeout, the broker will remove the consumer from the group and trigger a rebalance. The allowed range is configured with the broker configuration properties group.min.session.timeout.ms and group.max.session.timeout.ms. Also see max.poll.interval.ms. Type: integer
heartbeat.interval.ms	C	1 .. 3600000	3000	low	Group session keepalive heartbeat interval. Type: integer
group.protocol.type	C		consumer	low	Group protocol type. NOTE: Currently, the only supported group protocol type is consumer. Type: string
coordinator.query.interval.ms	C	1 .. 3600000	600000	low	How often to query for the current client group coordinator. If the currently assigned coordinator is down the configured query interval will be divided by ten to more quickly recover in case of coordinator reassignment. Type: integer
max.poll.interval.ms	C	1 .. 86400000	300000	high	Maximum allowed time between calls to consume messages (e.g., rd_kafka_consumer_poll()) for high-level consumers. If this interval is exceeded the consumer is considered failed and the group will rebalance in order to reassign the partitions to another consumer group member. Warning: Offset commits may be not possible at this point. Note: It is recommended to set enable.auto.offset.store=false for long-time processing applications and then explicitly store offsets (using offsets_store()) after message processing, to make sure offsets are not auto-committed prior to processing has finished. The interval is checked two times per second. See KIP-62 for more information. Type: integer
auto.commit.interval.ms	C	0 .. 86400000	5000	medium	The frequency in milliseconds that the consumer offsets are committed (written) to offset storage. (0 = disable). This setting is used by the high-level consumer. Type: integer
queued.min.messages	C	1 .. 10000000	100000	medium	Minimum number of messages per topic+partition librdkafka tries to maintain in the local consumer queue. Type: integer
queued.max.messages.kbytes	C	1 .. 2097151	65536	medium	Maximum number of kilobytes of queued pre-fetched messages in the local consumer queue. If using the high-level consumer this setting applies to the single consumer queue, regardless of the number of partitions. When using the legacy simple consumer or when separate partition queues are used this setting applies per partition. This value may be overshot by fetch.message.max.bytes. This property has higher priority than queued.min.messages. Type: integer
fetch.wait.max.ms	C	0 .. 300000	500	low	Maximum time the broker may wait to fill the Fetch response with fetch.min.bytes of messages. Type: integer
fetch.message.max.bytes	C	1 .. 1000000000	1048576	medium	Initial maximum number of bytes per topic+partition to request when fetching messages from the broker. If the client encounters a message larger than this value it will gradually try to increase it until the entire message can be fetched. Type: integer
max.partition.fetch.bytes	C	1 .. 1000000000	1048576	medium	Alias for fetch.message.max.bytes: Initial maximum number of bytes per topic+partition to request when fetching messages from the broker. If the client encounters a message larger than this value it will gradually try to increase it until the entire message can be fetched. Type: integer
fetch.max.bytes	C	0 .. 2147483135	52428800	medium	Maximum amount of data the broker shall return for a Fetch request. Messages are fetched in batches by the consumer and if the first message batch in the first non-empty partition of the Fetch request is larger than this value, then the message batch will still be returned to ensure the consumer can make progress. The maximum message batch size accepted by the broker is defined via message.max.bytes (broker config) or max.message.bytes (broker topic config). fetch.max.bytes is automatically adjusted upwards to be at least message.max.bytes (consumer config). Type: integer
fetch.min.bytes	C	1 .. 100000000	1	low	Minimum number of bytes the broker responds with. If fetch.wait.max.ms expires the accumulated data will be sent to the client regardless of this setting. Type: integer
fetch.error.backoff.ms	C	0 .. 300000	500	medium	How long to postpone the next fetch request for a topic+partition in case of a fetch error. Type: integer
offset.store.method	C	none, file, broker	broker	low	DEPRECATED Offset commit store method: 'file' - DEPRECATED: local file store (offset.store.path, et.al), 'broker' - broker commit store (requires Apache Kafka 0.8.2 or later on the broker). Type: enum value
isolation.level	C	read_uncommitted, read_committed	read_committed	high	Controls how to read messages written transactionally: read_committed - only return transactional messages which have been committed. read_uncommitted - return all messages, even transactional messages which have been aborted. Type: enum value
check.crcs	C	true, false	false	medium	Verify CRC32 of consumed messages, ensuring no on-the-wire or on-disk corruption to the messages occurred. This check comes at slightly increased CPU usage. Type: boolean
allow.auto.create.topics	C	true, false	false	low	Allow automatic topic creation on the broker when subscribing to or assigning non-existent topics. The broker must also be configured with auto.create.topics.enable=true for this configuraiton to take effect. Note: The default value (false) is different from the Java consumer (true). Requires broker version >= 0.11.0.0, for older broker versions only the broker configuration applies. Type: boolean
client.rack	*			low	A rack identifier for this client. This can be any string value which indicates where this client is physically located. It corresponds with the broker config broker.rack. Type: string
transactional.id	P			high	Enables the transactional producer. The transactional.id is used to identify the same transactional producer instance across process restarts. It allows the producer to guarantee that transactions corresponding to earlier instances of the same producer have been finalized prior to starting any new transactions, and that any zombie instances are fenced off. If no transactional.id is provided, then the producer is limited to idempotent delivery (if enable.idempotence is set). Requires broker version >= 0.11.0. Type: string
transaction.timeout.ms	P	1000 .. 2147483647	60000	medium	The maximum amount of time in milliseconds that the transaction coordinator will wait for a transaction status update from the producer before proactively aborting the ongoing transaction. If this value is larger than the transaction.max.timeout.ms setting in the broker, the init_transactions() call will fail with ERR_INVALID_TRANSACTION_TIMEOUT. The transaction timeout automatically adjusts message.timeout.ms and socket.timeout.ms, unless explicitly configured in which case they must not exceed the transaction timeout (socket.timeout.ms must be at least 100ms lower than transaction.timeout.ms). This is also the default timeout value if no timeout (-1) is supplied to the transactional API methods. Type: integer
enable.idempotence	P	true, false	false	high	When set to true, the producer will ensure that messages are successfully produced exactly once and in the original produce order. The following configuration properties are adjusted automatically (if not modified by the user) when idempotence is enabled: max.in.flight.requests.per.connection=5 (must be less than or equal to 5), retries=INT32_MAX (must be greater than 0), acks=all, queuing.strategy=fifo. Producer instantation will fail if user-supplied configuration is incompatible. Type: boolean
enable.gapless.guarantee	P	true, false	false	low	EXPERIMENTAL: subject to change or removal. When set to true, any error that could result in a gap in the produced message series when a batch of messages fails, will raise a fatal error (ERR__GAPLESS_GUARANTEE) and stop the producer. Messages failing due to message.timeout.ms are not covered by this guarantee. Requires enable.idempotence=true. Type: boolean
queue.buffering.max.messages	P	1 .. 10000000	100000	high	Maximum number of messages allowed on the producer queue. This queue is shared by all topics and partitions. Type: integer
queue.buffering.max.kbytes	P	1 .. 2147483647	1048576	high	Maximum total message size sum allowed on the producer queue. This queue is shared by all topics and partitions. This property has higher priority than queue.buffering.max.messages. Type: integer
queue.buffering.max.ms	P	0 .. 900000	5	high	Delay in milliseconds to wait for messages in the producer queue to accumulate before constructing message batches (MessageSets) to transmit to brokers. A higher value allows larger and more effective (less overhead, improved compression) batches of messages to accumulate at the expense of increased message delivery latency. Type: float
linger.ms	P	0 .. 900000	5	high	Alias for queue.buffering.max.ms: Delay in milliseconds to wait for messages in the producer queue to accumulate before constructing message batches (MessageSets) to transmit to brokers. A higher value allows larger and more effective (less overhead, improved compression) batches of messages to accumulate at the expense of increased message delivery latency. Type: float
message.send.max.retries	P	0 .. 2147483647	2147483647	high	How many times to retry sending a failing Message. Note: retrying may cause reordering unless enable.idempotence is set to true. Type: integer
retries	P	0 .. 2147483647	2147483647	high	Alias for message.send.max.retries: How many times to retry sending a failing Message. Note: retrying may cause reordering unless enable.idempotence is set to true. Type: integer
retry.backoff.ms	P	1 .. 300000	100	medium	The backoff time in milliseconds before retrying a protocol request. Type: integer
queue.buffering.backpressure.threshold	P	1 .. 1000000	1	low	The threshold of outstanding not yet transmitted broker requests needed to backpressure the producer's message accumulator. If the number of not yet transmitted requests equals or exceeds this number, produce request creation that would have otherwise been triggered (for example, in accordance with linger.ms) will be delayed. A lower number yields larger and more effective batches. A higher value can improve latency when using compression on slow machines. Type: integer
compression.codec	P	none, gzip, snappy, lz4, zstd	none	medium	compression codec to use for compressing message sets. This is the default value for all topics, may be overridden by the topic configuration property compression.codec. Type: enum value
compression.type	P	none, gzip, snappy, lz4, zstd	none	medium	Alias for compression.codec: compression codec to use for compressing message sets. This is the default value for all topics, may be overridden by the topic configuration property compression.codec. Type: enum value
batch.num.messages	P	1 .. 1000000	10000	medium	Maximum number of messages batched in one MessageSet. The total MessageSet size is also limited by batch.size and message.max.bytes. Type: integer
batch.size	P	1 .. 2147483647	1000000	medium	Maximum size (in bytes) of all messages batched in one MessageSet, including protocol framing overhead. This limit is applied after the first message has been added to the batch, regardless of the first message's size, this is to ensure that messages that exceed batch.size are produced. The total MessageSet size is also limited by batch.num.messages and message.max.bytes. Type: integer
delivery.report.only.error	P	true, false	false	low	Only provide delivery reports for failed messages. Type: boolean
sticky.partitioning.linger.ms	P	0 .. 900000	10	low	Delay in milliseconds to wait to assign new sticky partitions for each topic. By default, set to double the time of linger.ms. To disable sticky behavior, set to 0. This behavior affects messages with the key NULL in all cases, and messages with key lengths of zero when the consistent_random partitioner is in use. These messages would otherwise be assigned randomly. A higher value allows for more effective batching of these messages. Type: integer

Limitations

There are some limitations for the Kafka-based external streams, because Timeplus doesn’t control the storage or the data format for the external stream.

1. The UI wizard only support JSON or TEXT. To use Avro, Protobuf, or schema registry service, you need the SQL DDL.
2. _tp_time is available in the external streams (since Proton 1.3.30). _tp_append_time is set only when message timestamp is an append time.
3. Unlike normal streams, there is no historical storage for the external streams. Hence you cannot run table(my_ext_stream)or settings query_mode='table' To access data even before you create the external stream, you can use WHERE _tp_time >'2023-01-15' to travel to a specific timestamp in the past, or use SETTINGS seek_to='earliest'.
4. There is no retention policy for the external streams in Timeplus. You need to configure the retention policy on Kafka/Confluent/Redpanda. If the data is no longer available in the external systems, they cannot be searched in Timeplus either.