CREATE STREAM

Synopsis¶

CREATE [OR REPLACE] [SOURCE] STREAM [IF NOT EXISTS] stream_name 
  ( { column_name data_type [KEY] } [, ...] )
  WITH ( property_name = expression [, ...] );

Description¶

Create a new stream with the specified columns and properties.

Creating a stream registers it on an underlying Apache Kafka® topic, so you can use SQL statements to perform operations like joins and aggregations on the topic's data. The stream is said to be backed by the topic.

Important

Registering a stream on a topic by using the CREATE STREAM statement is distinct from using the CREATE STREAM AS SELECT statement, which creates a stream from the result of a SELECT query.

Specify CREATE OR REPLACE to replace an existing stream with a new query that resumes from the same processing point as the previously existing query.

If you provide the IF NOT EXISTS clause, the statement won't fail if a stream with the same name already exists. Instead, ksqlDB returns a warning, A stream with the same name already exists.

For more information, see Stream Processing.

See CREATE STREAM in action

KEY and VALUE columns¶

A stream can store its data in either KEY or VALUE columns. Both KEY and VALUE columns can be NULL.

If two rows have the same KEY, no special processing is done. This situation is handled differently by a ksqlDB TABLE, as shown in the following suummary.

	STREAM	TABLE
Key column type	`KEY`	`PRIMARY KEY`
NON NULL key constraint	No	Yes: A message in the Kafka topic with a NULL `PRIMARY KEY` is ignored.
Unique key constraint	No: A message with the same key as another has no special meaning.	Yes: A later message with the same key replaces earlier messages in the table.
Tombstones	No: A message with a NULL value is ignored.	Yes: A NULL message value is treated as a tombstone. Any existing row with a matching key is deleted from the table.

Each column in a stream is defined by the following syntax:

column_name: the name of the column. If unquoted, the name must be a valid SQL identifier and ksqlDB converts it to uppercase. The name can be quoted if case needs to be preserved or if the name is not a valid SQL identifier, for example `mixedCaseId` or `$with@invalid!chars`.

data_type: the SQL type of the column. Columns can be any of the data types supported by ksqlDB.

KEY: columns that are stored in the Kafka message's key should be marked as KEY columns. If a column is unmarked, ksqlDB loads it from the Kafka message's value. Unlike a table's PRIMARY KEY, a stream's keys can be NULL.

Serialization¶

For supported serialization formats, ksqlDB can integrate with Confluent Schema Registry to help ensure the correct message format for a stream.

ksqlDB can use Schema Inference to define columns automatically in your CREATE STREAM statements, so you don't need to declare them manually. Also, ksqlDB can use Schema Inference With ID to define columns automatically and enable using a physical schema for data serialization.

Note

To use the Avro, Protobuf, or JSON_SR formats, you must enable Schema Registry and set ksql.schema.registry.url in the ksqlDB Server configuration file. For more information, see Configure ksqlDB for Avro, Protobuf, and JSON schemas.
The JSON format doesn't require Schema Registry to be enabled.
Avro and Protobuf field names are not case sensitive in ksqlDB. This matches the ksqlDB column name behavior.

ROWTIME¶

Each row within the stream has a ROWTIME pseudo column, which represents the event time of the row. The timestamp is used by ksqlDB during windowing operations and during joins, where data from each side of a join is processed in time order.

The ROWTIME timestamp has an accuracy of milliseconds.

By default, ROWTIME is populated from the corresponding Kafka message timestamp. Set TIMESTAMP in the WITH clause to populate ROWTIME from a column in the Kafka message key or value.

For more information, see Time and Windows in ksqlDB Queries.

Partitioning¶

Assign the PARTITIONS property in the WITH clause to specify the number of partitions in the stream's backing topic.

Partitioning streams is especially important for stateful or otherwise intensive queries. For more information, see Parallelization.

ROWPARTITION and ROWOFFSET¶

Like ROWTIME, ROWPARTITION and ROWOFFSET are pseudo columns. They represent the partition and offset of the source topic.

For example, if you issue a push query on a stream backed by topic x that specifies ROWPARTITION or ROWOFFSET in the SELECT clause, the push query's projection contains the partition and offset information of the underlying messages in topic x.

Source streams¶

Provide the SOURCE clause to create a read-only stream.

When you create a SOURCE stream, the INSERT, DELETE TOPIC, and DROP STREAM statements aren't permitted. Also, source streams don't support pull queries.

Note

Source tables support pull queries. For more information, see CREATE TABLE.

To disable the SOURCE stream feature, set ksql.source.table.materialization.enabled to false in the ksqlDB Server properties file.

Stream properties¶

Use the WITH clause to specify details about your stream. The WITH clause supports the following properties.

FORMAT¶

The serialization format of both the message key and value in the topic. For supported formats, see Serialization Formats.

You can't use the FORMAT property with the KEY_FORMAT or VALUE_FORMAT properties in the same CREATE STREAM statement.

KAFKA_TOPIC (required)¶

The name of the Kafka topic that backs the stream.

The topic must already exist in Kafka, or you must specify PARTITIONS when you create the topic. The statement fails if the topic exists already with different partition or replica counts.

KEY_FORMAT¶

The serialization format of the message key in the topic. For supported formats, see Serialization Formats.

If not supplied, the system default is used, defined by ksql.persistence.default.format.key. If the default is also not set, the statement is rejected as invalid.

You can't use the KEY_FORMAT property with the FORMAT property in the same CREATE STREAM statement.

PARTITIONS¶

The number of partitions in the backing topic. You must set this property if you create a stream without an existing topic, and the statement fails if the topic doesn't exist.

You can't change the number of partitions on an existing stream. To change the partition count, you must drop the stream and create it again.

REPLICAS¶

The number of replicas in the backing topic. If this property isn't set, but PARTITIONS is set, the default Kafka cluster configuration for replicas is used for creating a new topic.

TIMESTAMP¶

By default, the ROWTIME pseudo column is the timestamp of the message in the Kafka topic.

You can use the TIMESTAMP property to override ROWTIME with the contents of the specified column within the Kafka message, similar to timestamp extractors in the Kafka Streams API.

Time-based operations, like windowing, process a record according to the timestamp in ROWTIME.

Timestamps have an accuracy of milliseconds.

TIMESTAMP_FORMAT¶

Use with the TIMESTAMP property to specify the type and format of the timestamp column.

If set, the TIMESTAMP column must be of type varchar and have a format that can be parsed with the Java DateTimeFormatter.
If not set, the ksqlDB timestamp column must be of type bigint or timestamp.

If your timestamp format has characters that require single quotes, escape them with successive single quotes, '', for example: 'yyyy-MM-dd''T''HH:mm:ssX'.

For more information, see Timestamp formats.

VALUE_DELIMITER¶

Set the delimiter string to use when VALUE_FORMAT is set to DELIMITED.

You can use a single character as a delimiter. The default is ','.

For space-delimited and tab-delimited values, use the special values SPACE or TAB instead of the actual space or tab characters.

VALUE_FORMAT¶

The serialization format of the message value in the topic. For supported formats, see Serialization Formats.

If VALUE_FORMAT isn't provided, the system default is used, defined by ksql.persistence.default.format.value. If the default is also not set, the statement is rejected as invalid.

You can't use the VALUE_FORMAT property with the FORMAT property in the same CREATE STREAM statement.

WRAP_SINGLE_VALUE¶

Specifies how ksqlDB deserializes the value of messages in the backing topic that contain only a single column.

If set to true, ksqlDB expects the column to have been serialized as a named column within a record.
If set to false, ksqlDB expects the column to have been serialized as an anonymous value.
If not supplied, the system default is used, defined by the ksql.persistence.wrap.single.values configuration property and defaulting to true.

Note

Be careful when you have a single-column schema where the value can be NULL, because NULL values have a special meaning in ksqlDB.
Supplying this property for formats that don't support wrapping, for example DELIMITED, or when the value schema has multiple columns, causes an error.

For more information, see Single field unwrapping.

Examples¶

-- stream with a page_id column loaded from the kafka message value:
CREATE STREAM pageviews (
    page_id BIGINT,
    viewtime BIGINT,
    user_id VARCHAR
  ) WITH (
    KAFKA_TOPIC = 'keyless-pageviews-topic',
    VALUE_FORMAT = 'JSON'
  );

-- stream with a page_id column loaded from the kafka message key:
CREATE STREAM pageviews (
    page_id BIGINT KEY,
    viewtime BIGINT,
    user_id VARCHAR
  ) WITH (
    KAFKA_TOPIC = 'keyed-pageviews-topic',
    VALUE_FORMAT = 'JSON'
  );

-- keyless stream, with value columns loaded from Schema Registry:
CREATE STREAM pageviews WITH (
    KAFKA_TOPIC = 'keyless-pageviews-topic',
    VALUE_FORMAT = 'JSON_SR'
  );

-- keyed stream, with value columns loaded from Schema Registry:
CREATE STREAM pageviews (
    page_id BIGINT KEY
  ) WITH (
    KAFKA_TOPIC = 'keyed-pageviews-topic',
    VALUE_FORMAT = 'JSON_SR'
  );

Last update: 2022-02-01