A push query is a form of query issued by a client that subscribes to a result as it changes in real-time. A good example of a push query is subscribing to a particular user's geographic location. The query requests the map coordinates, and because it's a push query, any change to the location is "pushed" over a long-lived connection to the client as soon as it occurs. This is useful for building programmatically controlled microservices, real-time apps, or any sort of asynchronous control flow.

Push queries are expressed using a SQL-like language. They can be used to query either streams or tables for a particular key. Also, push queries aren't limited to key look-ups. They support a full set of SQL, including filters, selects, group bys, partition bys, and joins.

Push queries enable you to query a stream or materialized table with a subscription to the results. You can subscribe to the output of any query, including one that returns a stream. A push query emits refinements to a stream or materialized table, which enables reacting to new information in real-time. They’re a good fit for asynchronous application flows. For request/response flows, see Pull Query.

Execute a push query by sending an HTTP request to the ksqlDB REST API, and the API sends back a chunked response of indefinite length.

The result of a push query isn't persisted to a backing Kafka topic. If you need to persist the result of a query to a Kafka topic, use a CREATE TABLE AS SELECT or CREATE STREAM AS SELECT statement.

Example push query

Specify a push query by using the EMIT CHANGES clause in a SELECT statement. The following statement shows how to select five events from a pageviews stream.

SELECT * FROM pageviews EMIT CHANGES LIMIT 5;

API Reference

• SELECT (Push Query)
• SELECT (Pull Query)

Page last revised on: 2020-04-29

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Last update: 2020-04-29