Cloudera Docs

Event Time tab

When using the Add Kafka table wizard on the Streaming SQL Console, you can configure the event time under the Event Time tab.

You can specify Watermark Definitions when adding a Kafka table. Watermarks use an event time attribute and have a watermark strategy, and can be used for various time-based operations. The Event Time tab provides the following properties to configure the event time field and watermark for the Kafka stream:
  • Input Timestamp Column: name of the timestamp column in the Kafka topic from where the watermarks are mapped to the Event Time Column of the Kafka table
  • Event Time Column: default or custom name of the resulting timestamp column where the watermarks are going to be mapped in the created Kafka table
  • Watermark seconds: number of seconds used in the watermark strategy. The watermark is defined by the current event timestamp minus this value.
You have the following options to configure the watermark strategy for the Kafka tables:
  • Using the default Kafka Timestamps setting
  • Using the default Kafka Timestamps setting, but providing custom name for the Event Time Column
  • Not using the default Kafka Timestamps setting, and providing all of the Kafka timestamp information manually
  • Not using watermark strategy for the Kafka table

Using the default Kafka Timestamp setting

By default, the Use Kafka Timestamps feature is enabled when you create the Kafka table. In the Event Time Column, the new event time field is extracted from the Kafka message header with the 'eventTimestamp' predefined column name.

After saving your changes, you can view the created DDL syntax for the table next to the SQL Editor on the Console page.

The following DDL example shows the default setting of the Event Time Column and Watermark Seconds where the corresponding fields were not modified.
'eventTimestamp' TIMESTAMPS(3) METADATA FROM 'timestamp',
WATERMARK FOR 'eventTimestamp' AS 'eventTimestamp' - INTERVAL '3' SECOND

Using the default Kafka Timestamp setting with custom Event Time Column name

When you want to modify the timestamp field of the DDL from the stream itself, you must provide a custom name of the Event Time Column. You can also add a custom value to the Watermark Seconds. The following example shows that 'ets' is the custom name for the Event Time Column, and '4' is the custom value for the Watermark Seconds.
The Event Time Column can only be modified if the following requirements are met for the timestamp field of the Input Timestamp Column:
  • The column type must be "long".
  • The format must be in epoch (in milliseconds since January 1, 1970).
The DDL syntax should reflect the changes made for the watermark strategy as shown in the following example:
'ets' TIMESTAMP(3) METADATA FROM 'timestamp',
WATERMARK FOR 'ets' - INTERVAL '4' SECOND

Manually providing the Kafka timestamp information

When you want to manually configure the watermark strategy of the Kafka table, you can provide the timestamp column name from the Kafka source, and add a custom column name for the resulting Kafka table. Make sure that you provide the correct column name for the Input Timestamp Column that exactly matches the column name in the Kafka source data.

To manually provide information for the watermark strategy, disable the Use Kafka Timestamps feature using the toggle, and provide the following information to the column name fields:
  • Input Timestamp Column: name of the timestamp field in the Kafka source
  • Event Time Column: predefined 'eventTimestamp' name or custom column name of the timestamp field in the created Kafka table
As an example, you have a timestamp column in the source Kafka topic named 'ts', and want to add a new timestamp column in your Kafka table as 'event_time'. You provide the original timestamp column name in the Input Timestamp Column as 'ts', and add the custom 'event_time' name to the Event Time Column.
This results in that the watermarks from the 'ts' column is going to be mapped to the 'event_time' column of the created Kafka table. As 'event_time' will become the timestamp column name in the Kafka table, you must use the custom name (in this example the 'event_time') when querying the Kafka stream. This configuration of the timestamp columns is optional.
The Event Time Column can only be modified if the following requirements are met for the timestamp field of the Input Timestamp Column:
  • The column type must be "long".
  • The format must be in epoch (in milliseconds since January 1, 1970).

Not using watermark strategy for Kafka table

In case you do not need any watermark strategies, disable the Use Kafka Timestamps feature using the toggle, and leave the column and seconds field empty.