Provenance Repository

The Provenance Repository contains the information related to Data Provenance. The next four sections are for Provenance Repository properties.

Property

Description

nifi.provenance.repository.implementation

The Provenance Repository implementation. The default value is org.apache.nifi.provenance.WriteAheadProvenanceRepository. Three additional repositories are available as well. To store provenance events in memory instead of on disk (in which case all events will be lost on restart, and events will be evicted in a first-in-first-out order), set this property to org.apache.nifi.provenance.VolatileProvenanceRepository. This leaves a configurable number of Provenance Events in the Java heap, so the number of events that can be retained is very limited.

A third and fourth option are available: org.apache.nifi.provenance.PersistentProvenanceRepository and org.apache.nifi.provenance.EncryptedWriteAheadProvenanceRepository. The PersistentProvenanceRepository was originally written with the simple goal of persisting Provenance Events as they are generated and providing the ability to iterate over those events sequentially. Later, it was desired to be able to compress the data so that more data could be stored. After that, the ability to index and query the data was added. As requirements evolved over time, the repository kept changing without any major redesigns. When used in a NiFi instance that is responsible for processing large volumes of small FlowFiles, the PersistentProvenanceRepository can quickly become a bottleneck. The WriteAheadProvenanceRepository was then written to provide the same capabilities as the PersistentProvenanceRepository while providing far better performance. The WriteAheadProvenanceRepository was added in version 1.2.0 of NiFi. Since then, it has proven to be very stable and robust and as such was made the default implementation. The PersistentProvenanceRepository is now considered deprecated and should no longer be used. If administering an instance of NiFi that is currently using the PersistentProvenanceRepository, it is highly recommended to upgrade to the WriteAheadProvenanceRepository. Doing so is as simple as changing the implementation property value from org.apache.nifi.provenance.PersistentProvenanceRepository to org.apache.nifi.provenance.WriteAheadProvenanceRepository. Because the Provenance Repository is backward compatible, there will be no loss of data or functionality.

The EncryptedWriteAheadProvenanceRepository builds upon the WriteAheadProvenanceRepository and ensures that data is encrypted at rest.

NOTE: The WriteAheadProvenanceRepository will make use of the Provenance data stored by the PersistentProvenanceRepository. However, the PersistentProvenanceRepository may not be able to read the data written by the WriteAheadProvenanceRepository. Therefore, once the Provenance Repository is changed to use the WriteAheadProvenanceRepository, it cannot be changed back to the PersistentProvenanceRepository without deleting the data in the Provenance Repository.