Properties of topics
When you create a topic, you can specify properties that the topic has. The available properties depend on the topic type.
| Type | PUBLISH VALUES ONLY | DONT RETAIN VALUES | SLAVE MASTER TOPIC (DEPRECATED) | TIDY ON UNSUB. | TIME SERIES EVENT VALUE TYPE | TIME SERIES RETAINED RANGE | TIME SERIES SUBSCR. RANGE | VALIDATE VALUES | SCHEMA | CONFLATION | COMPRESSION | OWNER | REMOVAL | PERSISTENT | PRIORITY |
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| Binary |
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| String |
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| Int64 |
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| Double |
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| Time series |
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REQUIRED |
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| RecordV2 |
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- PUBLISH_VALUES_ONLY
- By default, delta streaming is enabled.
If this property is set to true, delta streaming is disabled and
all values are published in full.
If there is little or no relationship between one value published to a topic and the next, delta streams will not reduce the amount of data transmitted. For such topics, it is better to set PUBLISH_VALUES_ONLY.
- DONT_RETAIN_VALUE
- If set to true, the latest value of the topic is not retained by
the
Diffusion™
server
or the client that publishes it.
New clients that subscribe do not receive an initial value. No value will be returned for fetch operations that select the topic.
For time series topics, if DONT_RETAIN_VALUE is set to true, time series events are still retained, but the latest value is not stored separately.
The DONT_RETAIN_VALUE property is useful for applications like a feed of news items, or for values that are only valid at the moment of publication. You can combine this with VALIDATE_VALUES.
Using DONT_RETAIN_VALUE reduces the topic memory footprint, but disables delta streaming. Using an update stream will send complete values to the server, instead of deltas. Disabling delta streaming is likely to increase the bandwidth used unless subsequent values are unrelated.
This property replaces the obsolete stateless topic type which was removed in Diffusion 6.2.
- TIDY_ON_UNSUBSCRIBE
- If set to true, when a session unsubscribes from
the topic, any updates for the topic that are still queued for the session are
removed.
There is a performance overhead to using this option as the client queue must be scanned to find topic updates to remove, however it may prove useful for preventing unwanted data being sent to sessions. This property is disabled by default.
- TIME_SERIES_EVENT_VALUE_TYPE
- Set this to the type name of a
Diffusion
data type. All events in the time series are of this data type. The type name can be
one of the following values:
- json
- binary
- string
- int64
- double
- record_v2
- TIME_SERIES_RETAINED_RANGE
- Set this to a range expression that specifies the range of events
retained by a time series topic. When a new event is added to the time series, older
events that fall outside of the range are discarded. If the property is not specified,
a time series topic retains the ten most recent events.
For more information about range expressions, see Range expressions.
- TIME_SERIES_SUBSCRIPTION_RANGE
- Set this to a range expression that specifies the range of
events sent to all new subscribers.
If a range expression is specified for this property, the specified subscription range is sent to the client session. This is true whether delta streams are enabled for the topic or not. However, to receive all the events in the specified range, the subscribing client session must register a stream before it subscribes to the topic. If a stream is not registered before subscription, the session receives only the latest value.
If the property is not specified, new subscribers will be sent the latest event if delta streams are enabled for the topic and no events if delta streams are disabled for the topic.
For more information about range expressions, see Range expressions.
- VALIDATE_VALUES
- If set to true, the topic rejects updates that would
create invalid instances of the topic's data type.
If set to anything other than true, no validation is performed and all values are streamed to subscribing clients whether they are valid data or not.
Validation has a performance overhead and is disabled by default.
Note: If validation is disabled and the value provided is not valid, the client might produce errors or other unexpected behavior. The exact error varies depending on the client platform. To avoid this, use the client-side validation method provided by the Diffusion API. - SCHEMA
- Optionally, define valid records and fields of a recordV2 topic.
A recordV2 topic contains records, which can be divided into fields. The schema names the records and fields and provides a mechanism for direct access to the fields. The schema is also used to validate the data to ensure it complies with the schema definition. The schema property is supplied as a JSON string that can be generated from a Schema object.
If no schema is provided, the topic data can be free format.
- CONFLATION
- Used to set a conflation policy for the topic. Conflation can
merge or discard topic updates to reduce server memory and network data usage. The supported values are:
- off
- conflate
- unsubscribe
- always
The default is "conflate".Note: Time series topics do not allow a conflation policy of 'conflate' or 'always'. They default to 'off'. You can set a conflation policy of 'unsubscribe'.See Using conflation for details of the policies.
- COMPRESSION
- Used to set a level of automatic compression for the topic.
The supported values are:
- off
- low
- medium
- high
The default is "low".
Higher compression levels decrease the amount of data, at the expense of greater CPU cost.
- OWNER
- Used to set a security principal as the owner of the topic.
The principal receives READ_TOPIC, MODIFY_TOPIC
and UPDATE_TOPIC privileges.
The format of the property value is:
$Principal is "name"
where name is the name of the principal.
- REMOVAL
- Used to set a topic removal policy.
The property is an expression which defines the conditions which will trigger automatic removal of the topic or of a set of topics specified with an optional selector.
See Removing topics automatically for details of the expression format.
- PERSISTENT
- Used to disable persistence for a topic.
If set to "false", the topic will not be persisted, even if persistence is enabled for the server.
- PRIORITY
- Used to set a topic delivery priority.
This property is used to prioritise updates sent to a subscribed client session in the event of a backlog.
Priority is applied to topic updates and topic subscription/unsubscription notifications.
The supported values are:- low
- default
- high
If no priority is set, "default" is used.
See Topic delivery priority for more details.
Range expressions
- A limit constraint
- A limit constraint specifies the maximum number of events from the end of the time
series.For example, the following expression requests the five most recent events:
limit 5
- A last constraint
- A last constraint specifies the maximum duration of events from the end of the time
series. The duration is expressed as an integer followed by one of the following time units:
- MS – milliseconds
- S – seconds
- H – hours
For example, the following expression requests all recent events that are no more than 30 seconds older than the latest event:last 30s
- Both a limit and a last constraint
- For example, the following expression requests the ten most recent events that are
no more than one minute older than the latest
event:
last 60s limit 10
If a range expression contains multiple constraints, the constraint that selects the smallest range is used.