Analytics

how-to

Enterprise Edition

Parallel data management for complex queries over many records, using a familiar SQL++ syntax.

For complex and long-running queries, involving large ad hoc join, set, aggregation, and grouping operations, Couchbase Data Platform offers the Couchbase Analytics Service (CBAS). This is the analytic counterpart to our operational data focussed Query Service. The analytics service is available in Couchbase Data Platform 6.0 and later (developer preview in 5.5).

Getting Started

After familiarizing yourself with our introductory primer, in particular creating a dataset and linking it to a bucket to shadow the operational data, try Couchbase Analytics using the .NET SDK. Intentionally, the API for analytics is very similar to that of the query service. In .NET SDK 2.6 and 2.7, Analytics was only available on the Bucket object; in .NET SDK 3.x, Analytics queries are submitted using the Cluster reference, not a Bucket or Collection:

var result = await cluster.AnalyticsQueryAsync<dynamic>("SELECT \"hello\" as greeting;");

foreach (var row in result.Rows)
{
    Console.WriteLine(row.greeting);
}

Queries

A query can either be simple or be parameterized. If parameters are used, they can either be positional or named. Here is one example of each:

var result = await cluster.AnalyticsQueryAsync<dynamic>("select airportname, country from airports where country = 'France';");

The query may be performed with positional parameters:

var result = await cluster.AnalyticsQueryAsync<dynamic>("select airportname, country from airports where country = ?;")
    .AddPositionalParameter("France");

Alternatively, the query may be performed with named parameters:

var result = await cluster.AnalyticsQueryAsync<dynamic>("select airportname, country from airports where country = $country;")
    .AddNamedParameter("country", "France");

As timeouts are propagated to the server by the client, a timeout set on the client side may be used to stop the processing of a request, in order to save system resources. See example in the next section.

Fluent API

Additional parameters may be sent as part of the query, using the fluent API. There are currently three parameters:

Client Context ID, sets a context ID that is returned back as part of the result. Uses the ClientContextId(String) builder; default is a random UUID
Server Side Timeout, customizes the timeout sent to the server. Does not usually have to be set, as the client sets it based on the timeout on the operation. Uses the Timeout(TimeSpan) builder, and defaults to the Analytics timeout set on the client (75s). This can be adjusted at the cluster global config level.
Priority, set if the request should have priority over others. The Priority(boolean) builder defaults to false.

Here, we give the request priority over others, and set a custom, server-side timeout value:

var result = await cluster.AnalyticsQueryAsync<dynamic>("select airportname, country from airports where country = 'France';",
    options =>
    {
        options.WithPriority(true);
        options.WithTimeout(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(100));
    }
);

Handling the Response

After checking that QueryStatus is success, we iterate over the rows. These rows may contain various sorts of data and metadata, depending upon the nature of the query, as you will have seen when working through our introductory primer.

try
{
    var result = await cluster.AnalyticsQueryAsync<dynamic>("SELECT \"hello\" as greeting;");

    if (result.Rows.Any()) // check there are results
    {
        foreach (var row in result.Rows)
        {
            Console.WriteLine($"Greeting: {row.greeting}");
        }
    }
}
catch (AnalyticsException exception)
{
    foreach (var error in exception.Errors)
    {
        Console.WriteLine($”Error: {error.Message}”);
    }
}

Check the xref:[Errors] list for possible values to be returned in the List<Error>, should QueryStatus return as Errors.

Common errors are listed in our Errors Reference doc, with exceptions caused by resource unavailability (such as timeouts and Operation cannot be performed during rebalance messages) leading to an automatic retry by the SDK.

MetaData

The Metrics object contains useful metadata, such as ElapsedTime, and ResultCount. Here is a snippet using several items of metadata

var result = await cluster.AnalyticsQueryAsync<dynamic>("SELECT \"hello\" as greeting;");

Console.WriteLine($”Elapsed time: {result.MetaData.Metrics.ElapsedTime}”);
Console.WriteLine($”Execution time: {result.MetaData.Metrics.ExecutionTime}”);
Console.WriteLine($”Result count: {result.MetaData.Metrics.ResultCount}”);
Console.WriteLine($”Error count: {result.MetaData.Metrics.ErrorCount}”);

For a listing of available Metrics in MetaData, see the Understanding Analytics SDK doc.

Advanced Analytics Topics

From Couchbase Data Platform 6.5, Deferred Queries and KV Ingestion are added to CBAS.

KV ingest

You can ingest the results of an Analytics query directly back into a given collection. This then allows the results themselves to be queried in turn.

From .NET SDK 3.1, KV Ingest has an Interface Level of Uncommited.

await cluster.IngestAsync<dynamic>(
    statement,
    collection,
    options =>
    {
        options.WithTimeout(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(75));
        options.WithExpiration(TimeSpan.FromDays(1));
    }
);

Scoped Queries on Named Collections

In addition to creating a dataset with a WHERE clause to filter the results to documents with certain characteristics, from SDK 3.1 you can now create a dataset against a named collection, for example:

ALTER COLLECTION `travel-sample`.inventory.airport ENABLE ANALYTICS;

-- NB: this is more or less equivalent to:
CREATE DATAVERSE `travel-sample`.inventory;
CREATE DATASET `travel-sample`.inventory.airport ON `travel-sample`.inventory.airport;

We can then query the Dataset as normal, using the fully qualified keyspace:

var result = await cluster.AnalyticsQueryAsync<dynamic>(
    "SELECT airportname, country FROM `travel-sample`.inventory.airport WHERE country='France' LIMIT 3");

await foreach (var row in result)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Result: " + row);
}