Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for SQL Applications: How It Works - Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for SQL Applications Developer Guide
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

For new projects, we recommend that you use the new Managed Service for Apache Flink Studio over Kinesis Data Analytics for SQL Applications. Managed Service for Apache Flink Studio combines ease of use with advanced analytical capabilities, enabling you to build sophisticated stream processing applications in minutes.

Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for SQL Applications: How It Works

Note

After September 12, 2023, you will not able to create new applications using Kinesis Data Firehose as a source if you do not already use Kinesis Data Analytics for SQL. For more information, see Limits.

An application is the primary resource in Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics that you can create in your account. You can create and manage applications using the Amazon Web Services Management Console or the Kinesis Data Analytics API. Kinesis Data Analytics provides API operations to manage applications. For a list of API operations, see Actions.

Kinesis Data Analytics applications continuously read and process streaming data in real time. You write application code using SQL to process the incoming streaming data and produce output. Then, Kinesis Data Analytics writes the output to a configured destination. The following diagram illustrates a typical application architecture.

Diagram showing a data analytics application, streaming input sources, reference data, and application output.

Each application has a name, description, version ID, and status. Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics assigns a version ID when you first create an application. This version ID is updated when you update any application configuration. For example, if you add an input configuration, add or delete a reference data source, add or delete an output configuration, or update application code, Kinesis Data Analytics updates the current application version ID. Kinesis Data Analytics also maintains timestamps for when an application was created and last updated.

In addition to these basic properties, each application consists of the following:

  • Input – The streaming source for your application. You can select either a Kinesis data stream or a Firehose data delivery stream as the streaming source. In the input configuration, you map the streaming source to an in-application input stream. The in-application stream is like a continuously updating table upon which you can perform the SELECT and INSERT SQL operations. In your application code, you can create additional in-application streams to store intermediate query results.

     

    You can optionally partition a single streaming source in multiple in-application input streams to improve the throughput. For more information, see Limits and Configuring Application Input.

     

    Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics provides a timestamp column in each application stream called Timestamps and the ROWTIME Column. You can use this column in time-based windowed queries. For more information, see Windowed Queries.

     

    You can optionally configure a reference data source to enrich your input data stream within the application. It results in an in-application reference table. You must store your reference data as an object in your S3 bucket. When the application starts, Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics reads the Amazon S3 object and creates an in-application table. For more information, see Configuring Application Input.

     

  • Application code – A series of SQL statements that process input and produce output. You can write SQL statements against in-application streams and reference tables. You can also write JOIN queries to combine data from both of these sources.

     

    For information about the SQL language elements that are supported by Kinesis Data Analytics, see Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics SQL Reference.

     

    In its simplest form, application code can be a single SQL statement that selects from a streaming input and inserts results into a streaming output. It can also be a series of SQL statements where output of one feeds into the input of the next SQL statement. Further, you can write application code to split an input stream into multiple streams. You can then apply additional queries to process these streams. For more information, see Application Code.

     

  • Output – In application code, query results go to in-application streams. In your application code, you can create one or more in-application streams to hold intermediate results. You can then optionally configure the application output to persist data in the in-application streams that hold your application output (also referred to as in-application output streams) to external destinations. External destinations can be a Firehose delivery stream or a Kinesis data stream. Note the following about these destinations:

    • You can configure a Firehose delivery stream to write results to Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, or Amazon OpenSearch Service (OpenSearch Service).

       

    • You can also write application output to a custom destination instead of Amazon S3 or Amazon Redshift. To do that, you specify a Kinesis data stream as the destination in your output configuration. Then, you configure Amazon Lambda to poll the stream and invoke your Lambda function. Your Lambda function code receives stream data as input. In your Lambda function code, you can write the incoming data to your custom destination. For more information, see Using Amazon Lambda with Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics.

    For more information, see Configuring Application Output.

In addition, note the following:

  • Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics needs permissions to read records from a streaming source and write application output to the external destinations. You use IAM roles to grant these permissions.

     

  • Kinesis Data Analytics automatically provides an in-application error stream for each application. If your application has issues while processing certain records (for example, because of a type mismatch or late arrival), that record is written to the error stream. You can configure application output to direct Kinesis Data Analytics to persist the error stream data to an external destination for further evaluation. For more information, see Error Handling.

     

  • Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics ensures that your application output records are written to the configured destination. It uses an "at least once" processing and delivery model, even if you experience an application interruption. For more information, see Delivery Model for Persisting Application Output to an External Destination.