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Version: 10.9.x

Projections Configuration

In this document we guide you through the configuration of Projections directly in the Console.

Create a System of Records

To create a Projection, you should first of all create a System of Records, which is the data source that updates the Projection.

To do so, open the Projections section in the Fast Data group of Mia-Platform Console. Then, select the Create new System of Records button.

The creation of a System of Records requires you to insert a System ID, which is basically the name to recognize the System, and to choose the Kafka message adapter.

Create a System of Records

The System of Records is then created.

Delete a System of Records

To delete a System of Records, you have to click the Delete button in the bottom-right corner of the System of Records detail page.

The deletion is not allowed as long as you have at least one Projection inside the System, hence you need to delete all the Projections in a System before being able to delete it.

Create a Projection

To create a new Projection, open the Projections section in the Fast Data group of Mia-Platform Console, then select an existing System of Records or create a new one.

Inside the System of Records page click the Create new Projection button on the top-right corner of the page and insert a Projection Name for the new Projection inside the pop-up displayed. After that, the new Projection details page will be displayed.

In order to finally create the new Projection, you will need to save the configuration.

Projection details

In order to access this section:

  1. Go to the Design Area
  2. Go to the Projections Section
  3. Select a System of Records and click on the arrow on the right
  4. Select an existing Projection and click on the arrow on the right

Projection fields

In the card Fields in projection, you can add new fields.

Once you click the Create field button, a form is prompted where you should insert the following fields (all fields are required):

NameTypeRequiredDescription
NameStringTrueName of the Projection Field. No spaces or special characters
DescriptionStringFalseDescription of the Field
TypeSelectTrueType of the Field. one of String, Number, Boolean, Date, Object, Array of object, Array of number, Array of string, ObjectId or GeoPoint
Cast FunctionCast FunctionTruethe possible Cast Function to select for the specified data type
RequiredCheckboxTrueSet the field as required, default to false
NullableCheckboxTrueDeclare field as nullable, default to false
Primary KeyCheckboxTrueSet the field as part of the primary key, default to false

It's mandatory to set at least one Primary Key for each Projection. Otherwise, you will not be able to save your configuration.

note

Setting the Primary Keys creates automatically the unique indexes as explained here

info

When the real-time updater deletes a projection document, it actually makes a virtual delete instead of real document deletion. This means that the document is actually kept in the database, but the __STATE__ field (one of the default fields of the CRUD Service) is set to DELETED.

Generate projection fields from data sample

In the card Fields in Projection, you can upload a data sample to generate fields by clicking on the appropriate button. Doing this will replace the current fields with those contained within the file. The supported file extension are: .csv and .json.

Example json

[
{
"field1": "anyString",
"field2": "true",
"field3": "123"
}
]

Example CSV

field1,field2,field3
false,anyString,123

At the end of the upload an internal function will try to cast the types correctly, otherwise it will treat them as strings by default.

note

Import of fields is supported only for the following data types: String, Number, Boolean or Date. For example, you cannot import fields of type object. In Case some fields are not in the correct format, they will be ignored.

caution

You cannot import fields with the same name as one of the metadata fields. If this happens, a warning will be displayed and the import won't be successful

Indexes

In the card Indexes, you can add indexes to the collection. To learn more about CRUD indexes, click here. However, differently from Indexes that can be created on a normal CRUD, in this section the Geo index type is not available.

An _id index is created by default, and it is not deletable.

Both custom fields and metadata can be used as fields for indexes.

Primary Key Index Automation

An automation on the primary key index is available in the console. If enabled, the automation will update a primary key index, starting either from an index of your choice, or a newly generated one named primary_key_index.

info

A primary key index is an index made up of all the projection fields that are marked as primary keys, and no other field.

From the Console, you can change your preferences about primary key index automation by selecting a different index to be marked as primary key index, and by turning the functionality on or off. When the automation is on, the index will be updated only after you change the fields of the projection.

caution

In order for the Real Time Updater to correctly update its projections two actions are necessary:

  • You should define at least one custom field with flags Primary Key and Required set to true in the Fields card.
  • Then, you should create an index using the previously defined custom field and set to true the index unique flag.

In this way, the Real Time Updater updates the Projection document with the correct primary key value instead of creating a new document.

Kafka topics

Inside each Projection detail page, a section named Kafka topics contains information about the following topics:

  • Ingestion topic
  • PR update topic

Ingestion topic

This section contains the name of the ingestion topics for each environment. The topic names are editable and pre-compiled with our suggested format:

tenantId.environmentId.systemId.projectionName.ingestion

where tenantId, environmentId, systemId and projectionName are filled with, respectively, the id of the tenant of the project, the id of the associated environment, the id of the System which owns the Projection and the name of the Projection.

PR update topic

This section contains the name of the PR update topics for each environment. The topic names are editable and pre-compiled with our default format:

tenantId.environmentId.systemId.projectionName.pr-update

where tenantId, environmentId, systemId and projectionName are filled with the same values specified in the previous paragraph about ingestion topics.

When a new Projection is created, the PR update topics values (for each Projection and for each environment) are added to the FAST_DATA_PR_UPDATES_MAP_{SYSTEM_OF_RECORDS_NAME} public variable, where {SYSTEM_OF_RECORDS_NAME} is filled with the capitalized name of the new Projection System of Records. For existing System of Records, if the public variable is not present it will be created when saving the configuration.

The content of the FAST_DATA_PR_UPDATES_MAP_{SYSTEM_OF_RECORDS_NAME} public variable is then added to the kafkaProjectionUpdates.json config map, used by the Real-Time Updater service inside the KAFKA_PROJECTION_CHANGES_FOLDER environment variable, which contains its folder path.

info

If you prefer to use custom topics for PR updates, it will be necessary to create a new config map containing the PR update topics values (for each Projection and for each environment) inside a JSON file. The new config map folder path should be then inserted inside the KAFKA_PROJECTION_CHANGES_FOLDER environment variable of the Real-Time Updater.

Projection metadata

A projection has the predefined collection properties which are required for the CRUD Service, which is the service responsible for creating the collection on MongoDB.

These fields cannot be deleted and only the _id field is editable. You cannot add custom fields to the metadata.

These fields have no Cast function assigned because they are not used for mapping of fields from the received Kafka message. This means that if the Kafka message contains a field with the same name as one of the metadata fields, it is not copied on the Projection.

There are also some of these fields that are used to track the time of creation and update of the projection document. Those are:

  • createdAt: meaning the timestamp of the creation of the document on the database
  • updatedAt: meaning the timestamp of the latest update that the document received
  • timestamp: reporting the timestamp of the Kafka message that generated the document.

:::Info Every one of these timestamp fields has the format yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.SSS+ZZ:ZZ :::

Import multiple projections from a DDL file

Most DBMSes have some way of exporting the database schema, producing a DDL file that contains a sequence of statements like CREATE_TABLE, ALTER_TABLE, and CREATE_INDEX. With this kind of file, the Console can create multiple projections for a given System of Records, which creates a set of projections with the following information:

  • All the fields (both custom and default); the custom fields can only have type number or string. All the numeric types will be converted to number, every other SQL type will be converted to string.
  • All the indexes specified in the DDL, plus a primary key index that will be automatically generated if not already present.
caution

The maximum size of the DDL file is 20MB

Importing - step 1

To start importing projections from a DDL, you need to go to the Design Area, Projections Section, and create or edit a System of Records. Once there, in the top right corner you will find an import button, which will open a Modal that will guide you through the import process.

On the first page, you will need to specify a topic pattern:

Topic pattern

The topic pattern is a template string that will be interpolated for each combination of environment and projection to generate the topic prefixes. The syntax used is the same of the intuitive javascript template strings, with the following variables:

  • tenantId
  • projectId
  • systemId
  • projectionId
  • envId

The default value for this input is the same as the default used by the Console, which is ${tenantId}.${envId}.${systemId}.${projectionId}.ingestion.

Topic pattern modal page

Importing - step 2

The second page lets you upload the DDL file, and provides information about the supported SQL dialects, which are:

  • MySQL / MariaDB
  • MSSQL
  • Oracle
  • PostgreSQL
  • SQLite
caution

Keep in mind that supported means you will be able to generate projections correctly, but the fields types will only be either number or string.

Upload file modal page

Importing - step 3

In the last step you will be presented with a recap of what you are about to import. A tree view of projections will be displayed, each projection having fields and indexes as children. For fields, only the names of the custom fields will be displayed, and for the indexes only the name of the indexes. This page will also warn you about possible problems in the configuration, so read the warnings carefully and remember to take action when needed (e.g. missing primary key).

When you click continue, the console will generate the new configuration for the System, which you can explore the result of the import directly from the console. If you are happy with the result as it is, you can directly commit, and it will be saved in the configuration, otherwise you can freely edit the generated projections as you normally do, and then commit. Any previous Projections with different name will remain untouched, while projections with the same name will be overwritten.

Tree view modal page

Expose projections through API

You can expose a projection through API, only with GET method (the data in the projection are modifiable only by the Real Time Updater service).

To expose the Fast Data projection, create an Endpoint with type Fast Data Projection linked to the desired projection.

You can expose a projection on a CMS page to help you review the data inside the collection, follow Configure CMS extensions.

info

The exposed API is not required for Fast Data to work. It is an optional behavior in case you need access to the data without directly accessing it from the database.

Technical limitation

In your custom files (e.g. kafka-adapters) you can import only the node modules present in the following list:

caution

It is used the node version 14.