Website | Docs | API Docs | Community Slack

Kinetica Python API

• Overview
• Installation Instructions
• Troubleshooting Installation
• GPUdb Table Monitor Client API
• Support
• Contact Us

Overview

This is the 7.2.x.y version of the client-side Python API for Kinetica. The first two components of the client version must match that of the Kinetica server. When the versions do not match, the API will print a warning. Often, there are breaking changes between versions, so it is critical that they match. For example, Kinetica 6.2 and 7.0 have incompatible changes, so the 6.2.x.y versions of the Python API would NOT be compatible with 7.0.a.b versions.

Installation Instructions

To install this package, run python setup.py install in the root directory of the repo. Note that due to the in-house compiled C-module dependency, this package must be installed, and simply copying gpudb.py or having a link to it will not work.

There is also an example file in the example directory.

The documentation can be found at https://docs.kinetica.com/7.2/.
The Python specific documentation can be found at:

• Complete API: https://docs.kinetica.com/7.2/api/python/
• Tutorial: https://docs.kinetica.com/7.2/guides/python_guide/

For changes to the client-side API, please refer to CHANGELOG.md. For changes to Kinetica functions, please refer to CHANGELOG-FUNCTIONS.md.

Troubleshooting Installation

• If you get an error when running pip like

  "Traceback ... File "/bin/pip", line 5, in <module> from pkg_resources import load_entry_point"

please try upgrading pip with command:

    python -m pip install --upgrade --force pip

• If you get an error when running pip like

    "Exception: Traceback ... File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/basecommand.py", line 215, in main status = self.run(options, args)"

please try downgrading your version of pip setuptools with command:

    pip install setuptools==33.1.1

GPUdb Table Monitor Client API

A new API was introduced in version 7.0.17.0 to facilitate working with table monitors, which watch for insert, update, and delete operations on a table. The main classes to use are GPUdbTableMonitor.Client and GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback. GPUdbTableMonitor.Client creates and subscribes to monitors on the target table per the user's choice; it can create one of each type of the following monitors:

Monitor Type	Triggered Event Result
Insert	A list of the inserted records
Update	Count of updated rows
Delete	Count of deleted rows

When one of the above events happen at the target table, the monitor client API can invoke user-written functions that supposedly react to that type of event. To facilitate integrating such user-written functions, GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback is provided. More on that to follow. GPUdbTableMonitor.Client can be used in two ways:

• Create an instance and pass in the appropriate arguments (including a list of GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback objects. Use this instance in ther user's application directly.

• Extend the class with all the necessary callback functions. These newly definied functions then need to be passed to the superclass's, i.e. GPUdbTableMonitor.Client's, constructor.

Note that the current implementation, the GPUdbTableMonitor.Client class is designed to handle a single Kinetica table. Also note that GPUdbTableMonitor.Client utilizes multiple threads internally. This needs to be taken into consideration if the user application is also multi-threaded. There is an example of such a scenario included in the examples directory (see the examples section below).

GPUdbTableMonitor.Options

This class allows the user to configure the behavior of the GPUdbTableMonitor.Client class. The following options are currently available:

Property Name	Description	Default Value
inactivity_timeout	A timeout in minutes for monitor inactivity. If the monitor does not receive any even triggers during such a period, the API will check if the table still exists or if the active Kinetica cluster is still operational. The API will take appropriate corrective actions to ensure that the monitor continues to function. In case of the deletion of the target table, the monitor will log the event and stop execution. The parameter takes in float values to allow for fractions of minutes as the timeout.	20 (minutes)

GPUdbTableMonitor.Options Examples

from gpudb import GPUdbTableMonitor
options = GPUdbTableMonitor.Options(
                                    _dict=dict(
                                    inactivity_timeout = 0.1,
                                ))

GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback

This class facilitates integration of the table monitor API with the user's client application code. When the target table is monitored by GPUdbTableMonitor.Client to have a triggering event like insertion, update, or deletion of records, the client application needs to be notified. There are some additional events like the table being dropped or altered that also may need to trigger actions in the user's application. This class is the mechanism for notifying the user application. The notification is done via user-written methods called callbacks that will be executed upon such trigger events; these callbacks are passed to GPUdbTableMonitor.Client as a method reference via the GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback class. In other words, users pass methods that they have written via GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback to GPUdbTableMonitor.Client, and the latter class invokes these methods when trigger events occur.

GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback.Type

Each GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback instance corresponds to a certain type of table monitor event. The GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback.Type enum represents which event it is for. The following are the currently available event types:

Callback Type	Description
INSERT_DECODED	Describes a callback that is to be invoked when a record has been insserted into the target table; the API is to decode the record into a Python dict object and pass it to the callback.
INSERT_RAW	Describes a callback that is to be invoked when a record has been insserted into the target table; the API will invoke the callback and pass the raw data (per record) to the method without any decoding.
DELETED	Describes a callback that is to be invoked when records have been deleted from the target table; the API will pass the count of records deleted to the callback method.
UPDATED	Describes a callback that is to be invoked when records have been update in the target table; the API will pass the count of updated records to the callback method.
TABLE_ALTERED	Describes a callback that is to be invoked when the table has been altered in such a way that the record's structure type has been also changed.
TABLE_DROPPED	Describes a callback that is to be invoked when the table has been dropped.

Callback Methods

Per callback type, there are two methods: one for the actual event (insert, update, delete, alter, dropped etc.) and another for any error case. The former is called an event callback, and the latter error callback.

Event Callback

The event callback is a method that is written by the end-user of this API. It is passed by reference to GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback. When the target table has a trigger event, this method will be invoked by the table monitor API, passing to it the value corresponding to the change that happened to the table. The method must have a single input argument. No return value is expected or handled (therefore, the method could return something but it will simply be ignored). The actual name of the method does not matter at all. Only the signature--the sole input argument in this case--matters. Here are the descriptions of the method signature based on the table monitor type:

Callback Type	Input Argument Type	Input Argument Description
INSERT_DECODED	dict	The record inserted into the target table decoded as a Python dict
INSERT_RAW	bytes	The record inserted into the target table in binary-encoded format
DELETED	int	The number of records deleted from the target table.
UPDATED	int	The number of records updated in the target table.
TABLE_ALTERED	str	The name of the table.
TABLE_DROPPED	str	The name of the table.

Error Callback

GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback can take an optional method reference for error cases. If provided, this method will be called when errors occur during the lifetime of the specific table monitor. Note that since each GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback instance takes in this optional method reference, each type of table monitor event type can have its own specialized error handling written by the user. This method, like the event callback, needs to have a single input argument. The data type of this argument is string. An error message is passed to the method describing the error. Like the event callback, the return value of the method is ignored.

GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback.Options

Each GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback object can have specialized options. Note that GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback.Options is not supposed to be passed to the GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback constructor, but one its derived classes ought to be passed in (each derived class pertains to a certain callback type). Currently, only the GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback.Type.INSERT_DECODED has meaningful options; therefore, only one class, GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback.InsertDecodedOptions is defined.

GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback.InsertDecodedOptions

The following options are available for callbacks of type GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback.Type.INSERT_DECODED:

Property Name	Description	Default Value
decode_failure_mode	Indicates how the table monitor API should behave upon failures when trying to decode inserted records. Upon a failure, the API will automatically try to recover once by checking if the table's type has been altered; if so, the API will retry decoding the record with the current type of the table. If that succeeds, then the API continues. However, if this second attempt at decoding fails, then the API needs to know what to do next.	GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback.InsertDecodedOptions.DecodeFailureMode.SKIP

See GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback.InsertDecodedOptions.DecodeFailureMode below.

GPUdbTableMonitor.Callback.InsertDecodedOptions.DecodeFailureMode

An enum describing the various modes of behavior when a decoding failure occurs for an insert table monitor.

Mode	Description
SKIP	Skip this record upon decoding failure and proceed with the monitoring activities.
ABORT	Abort all monitoring activities and quit the program.

Examples

1. table_monitor_example.py This example uses the class GPUdbTableMonitorExample which is derived from the class GPUdbTableMonitor.Client to demonstrate how to use the client class provided by Kinetica for first-time users. The defined callback methods in GPUdbTableMonitorExample just logs the event payloads.

2. table_monitor_example_queued_impl.py This example demonstrates a scenario where the table monitor API is used in an application that runs it's own thread(s). In such a situation, some communication mechanism will be needed since the table monitor also runs its own separate threads. To handle this inter-thread communication, a Queue instance is used. There could be many ways to achieve the inter-thread communication; this is just an example to demonastrate such usage using the Python built-in Queue class. This example defines a class called QueuedGPUdbTableMonitor which inherits from GPUdbTableMonitor.Client and defins the callback functions. Additionally, this class has a Queue instance which is shared with the client class TableMonitorExampleClient. TableMonitorExampleClient inherits from Thread and runs in its own thread. As the table monitor receives notifications it just pushes them into the shared Queue and then TableMonitorExampleClient consumes them from the shared Queue and displays them in the console.

Support

For bugs, please submit an issue on Github.

For support, you can post on stackoverflow under the kinetica tag or Slack.

Contact Us

• Ask a question on Slack: Slack
• Follow on GitHub: Follow @kineticadb
• Email us: support@kinetica.com
• Visit: https://www.kinetica.com/contact/