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Hands-on quick tour

This tour will give you a quick hands-on look at Striim's dashboards, Source Preview, Flow Designer, and more.

If you already have Striim Platform installed and running, continue with Viewing dashboards.

Otherwise, see Install Striim Platform for evaluation purposes.

Viewing dashboards

  1. Select Apps > View All Apps.

    If you don't see PosApp, select Create App > Import TQL file, navigate to Striim/Samples/PosApp, double-click PosApp.tql, enter Samples as the namespace, and click Import.

  2. At the bottom right corner of the PosApp tile, select ... > Deploy > Deploy.

  3. When deployment completes, select ... > Start. The counter on the bell (alert) icon at the top right should start counting up, indicating that alerts are being generated.

  4. From the top left menu, select Dashboards > View All Dashboards > PosAppDash.

It may take a minute for enough data to load that your display looks like the following. The PosApp sample application shows credit card transaction data for several hundred merchants (for more information, see PosApp).

A sample visualization dashboard with a geographic chart of the United States in the top left, a horizontal bar chart in the top right, a scatter plot in the bottom left, and a heat map in the bottom right.

Hover the mouse over a map or scatter plot point, bar, or heat-map segment to display a pop-up showing more details.

Click a map or plot point to drill down for details on a particular merchant:

A detail from a dashboard displaying minimum, maximum, average, and actual event counts.

To return to the main page, click Samples.PosAppDash in the breadcrumbs:

An image of the breadcrumb trail reading Samples. PosAppDash > Main.

You can filter the data displayed in the dashboard using page-level or visualization-level text search or time-range filters.

A text field used for search. There is a magnifying glass at the start of the field, which contains the string 'recreation'.

With the above text search, the dashboard displays data only for Recreational Equipment Inc.

A dashboard displaying only results matching the search string.

Click the x in the search box to clear the filter.

To try the time-range filter, click the filter icon at the top right of the scatter chart, select StartTime, and set the dialog as shown below:

  1. Filter: select is between

  2. Value: Enter 2013-03-12 and 8:45pm as the from start date and time, and 2013-03-12 and 9:00pm as the to date and time.

  3. Click Apply.

A scatter-plot chart with a filter that specifies a start and an end date.

Click Clear to clear the filter.

The Pages menu selector open to show the Main and Interactive HeatMap options. Interactive HeatMap is selected.

When you are through exploring the dashboard, continue with Creating sources and caches using Source Preview.

Creating sources and caches using Source Preview

Source Preview is a graphical alternative to defining sources and caches using TQL. With it, you:

  1. browse regular or HDFS volumes accessible by the Striim server

  2. select the file you want

  3. select the appropriate parser (Apache, structured text, unstructured text, or XML)

  4. choose settings for the selected parser, previewing the effects on how the data is parsed

  5. generate a new application containing the source or cache, or add it to an existing application

For sources, Source Preview will also create:

  • a CQ to filter the raw data and convert the fields to Striim data types

  • a stream of type WAEvent linking the source and CQ

  • an output stream of a new type based on the parser settings you chose in Source Preview

Create a source

The following steps create a source from the sample data used by PosApp:

  1. Select Apps > Create New > Source Preview > Samples > PosDataPreview.csv > Preview.

  2. Check Use first line for column names and set columndelimiter to , (comma).

  3. PosApp uses only the MERCHANTID, DATETIME, AUTHAMOUNT, and ZIP columns, so uncheck the others.

  4. Set the data types for DATETIME to DateTime (check Unix Timestamp) and for AUTHAMOUNT to Double. Leave MERCHANTID and ZIP set to String.

    A table displaying the Business Name, Merchant ID, Primary Account Number, POS Data Code, Date and Time, and Expiration date. Each of these columns has a selector for data type and all columns except for Date and Time are set to String. Date and Time is set to DateTime.
    A table displaying the Currency Code, Authorization Amount, Terminal ID, ZIP Code, and City. Each of these columns has a selector for data type and all columns except for Authorization Amount are set to String. Authorization Amount is set to Double.

  5. The data is now parsed correctly, the columns have been selected, and their names and data types have been set, so click Save.

  6. For Name enter PosSourceApp.

  7. If you are logged in as admin, for Namespace enter PosSourceNS. Otherwise, select your personal namespace. Then click Next.

  8. For Name enter PosSource, then click Save.

The new PosSourceApp application appears in the flow editor.

An image of the Source Preview Flow Editor showing PosSource connected to PosSource_Stream.

At this point you could add additional components such as a window, CQ, and target to refine the application, or export it to TQL for use in manually coded applications.

Add a cache

The following steps will add a cache to the PosSourceApp application:

  1. Download USAddressesPreview.zip from github.com/striim/doc-downloads and unzip it.

  2. Select user_menu_icon_403.png > My Files, click Select File next to No File Selected (not the one next to Cancel), navigate to and double-click USAddressesPreview.txt, and click Upload and Select

  3. Select Apps > Create New > Source Preview > Browse, select USAddressesPreview.txt, and click Select File.

  4. Check Use first line for column names, set columndelimiter to \t (tab), set the data type for latVal and longVal to Double, and click Save.

  5. Select Use Existing, select PosSourceApp, and click Next.

  6. Select Create cache, for Name enter ZipCache, for Cache Key select Zip, leave Cache Refresh blank, and click Save.

Warning

If you save as a cache and deploy the application, the entire file will be loaded into memory.

Continue with Modifying an application using the Flow Designer.

Modifying an application using Flow Designer

The instructions in this topic assume you have completed the steps in Creating sources and caches using Source Preview and are looking at PosSourceApp in Flow Designer:

The Flow Designer with PosSourceApp open. The components PosSource, PosSource_Stream_CQ, and ZipCache are visible.

We will enhance this application with a query to join the source and cache and populate a target and WActionStore.

  1. Collapse Sources and expand Base Components.

    The left toolbar of Source Preview with the Base Components module expanded. Base Components are Source, Cache, Window, Stream, Continuous Query, Target, and WActionStore.

  2. Click WActionStore, drag it into the workspace, and drop.

  3. Set the name to PosSourceData.

    Details of a new WActionStore event. The name is PosSourceData. The Type selector is open and New: PosSourceContext is selected.

  4. Click in the Type field and enter PosSourceContext as a new type.

  5. Click Add Field four times.

  6. Set the fields and data types as shown below. Click the key icon next to MerchantId to set it as the key for PosSourceContext.

    An image of a table with the columns Key, Field, Alias, and Type. The Key column contains a grayed-out image of a key in each row.

  7. Add four more fields as shown below.

    An image of a table with the column Key, Field, Alias, and Type. The rows displayed are for City, State, LatVal, and LongVal. There is an Add Field link at the bottom of the table and a Save button below the Add Field link.

  8. Click the Save just below the types (not the one at the bottom of the property editor).

  9. Set Event Types to PosSourceContext, set Key Field to Merchant ID, and click Save (the one at the bottom of the property editor).

  10. Drag a continuous query (CQ) into the workspace.

  11. Set the name to GenerateWactionContext.

  12. Enter or paste the following in the Query field:

    SELECT p.MERCHANTID,
  p.DATETIME,
  p.AUTHAMOUNT,
  z.Zip,
  z.City, 
  z.State,
  z.LatVal,
  z.LongVal
FROM PosSource_TransformedStream p, ZipCache z
WHERE p.ZIP = z.Zip

  13. Set Output to Existing Output and PosSourceData. The configuration dialog should look like this:

    The definition window for a new Continuous Query.

  14. Click Save. The application should look like this:

    The updated Flow Designer schematic.

  15. The status should now show Created. Select Deploy App > Deploy.

    The Created selector, open to Deploy App.

  16. When the status changes to Deployed, select the stream icon below GenerateWactionContext, then click the eye icon or Preview On Run. The data preview pane will appear at the bottom of the window.

    Stream details for PosSource_TransformedStream.

  17. Click Deployed and select Start App. Counts will appear above each of the application's components indicating how many events it is processing per second. (Since this application has a small amount of data, these counts may return to zero before they are refreshed. Run MultiLogApp for a larger data set where the counts will be visible for longer.)

    The GenerateWactionContext stream, displaying a message flow rate of 8696 messages per second.

    The first 100 events from the GenerateWactionContext output stream will be displayed in the preview pane.

    A sample of the preview data from PosSource_TransformedStream.

At this point, the WActionStore contains data, so we can query or visualize it. Continue with Browsing data with ad-hoc queries.

Browsing data with ad-hoc queries

Ad-hoc queries let you do free-form queries on WActionStores, caches, or streams in real time by entering select statements in the Tungsten console. The syntax is the same as for queries in TQL applications (see CREATE CQ (query)) .

The following example assumes you performed the steps in Modifying an application using the Flow Designer, including deploying and starting the application.

  1. Open a terminal window and start the Tungsten console. If Striim is installed in /opt, the command is: /opt/Striim/bin/console.sh

  2. Log in with username admin and the password you provided when you installed Striim.

  3. At the W (admin) > prompt, enter the following: select * from PosSourceNS.PosSourceData; You should see something like the following:

    [
   MerchantId = Mpc6ZXJBAqw7fOMSSj8Fnlyexx6wsDY7A4E
   DateTime = 2607-11-27T09:22:53.210-08:00
   Amount = 23.33
   Zip = 12228
   City = Albany
   State = NY
   LatVal = 42.6149
   LongVal = -73.9708
]
[
   MerchantId = Mpc6ZXJBAqw7fOMSSj8Fnlyexx6wsDY7A4E
   DateTime = 2607-11-27T09:22:53.210-08:00
   Amount = 34.26
   Zip = 23405
   City = Machipongo
   State = VA
   LatVal = 37.4014
   LongVal = -75.9082
]

  4. Press Enter to exit the query.

  5. If you prefer, you can see the data in a tabular format. To try that, enter: set printformat=row_format;

  6. Press cursor up twice to recall the query, then press Enter to run it again. You should see the following (if necessary, widen the terminal window to format the table correctly):

Query results as displayed in the console.

To switch back to the default format:

set printformat=json;

Continue with Creating a dashboard.

Creating a dashboard

In Viewing dashboards you saw the dashboard of the PosApp sample application. Now you will create one from scratch.

The following instructions assume you completed the steps in Modifying an application using the Flow Designer and Browsing data with ad-hoc queries and that the application is still running.

  1. From the main menu, select Dashboards > View All Dashboards.

  2. Click Add Dashboard, for Dashboard Name enter PosSourceDash, for Namespace select PosSourceNS as the namespace, and click Create Dashboard. A blank dashboard will appear.

    blank_dashboard_403.png

  3. To add a visualization to the dashboard, drag a Vector Map from the visualization palette and drop it on the grid.

  4. The first step in configuring a dashboard is to specify its query: click Edit Query.

    dashboard_edit_query_403.png

  5. In the Query Name field, enter PosSourceNS.PosSourceDataSelectAll, edit the query to read select * from PosSourceData; and click Save Query.

    creating_a_dashboard_query_403.png

  6. Click Configure (the pencil icon).

    edit_visualization_403.png

  7. Set the map properties as shown above, then click Save Visualization.

    create_dashboard_zoomed_out.png

  8. Since the data is all in the continental United States, you might want to edit the settings to center it there. You could also change the Bubble Size settings so that the dots on the map vary depending on the amount.

    Screen_Shot_2015-09-01_at_4.51.16_PM.png

  9. Click Configure again, change the settings as shown above, click Save Visualization, then refresh your browser to apply the new zoom settings.

    create_dashboard_zoomed_in.png

Experiment with the settings or try more visualizations if you like. For more information on this subject, see Dashboard Guide.

Continue with Exporting applications and dashboards

Exporting applications and dashboards

To save the work you have done so far, you can export the application and dashboard to files.

  1. From the upper-left menu, select Apps.

  2. From PosSourceApp's ... menu, select Export.

  3. Click Export (since the app contains no Encrypted passwords, do not specify a passphrase).

  4. Optionally, change the file name or directory, then click Save.

  5. From the top menu, select Dashboards > View All Dashbaords.

  6. Click PosSourceDash.

  7. Select Export. Optionally, change the file name or directory, then click Save.

    export_dashboard_403.png

You may import the exported application TQL file and dashboard JSON file to any namespace. Note that for the dashboard to work you must import it to the same namespace as the application.

You may edit the exported TQL file as discussed in Programmer's Guide.

What next?

See Web UI Overview for a look at additional Striim features.

Run the CDC demo applications to explore Striim's data migration capabilities (see Running the CDC demo apps).

If you do not plan to write Striim applications but would like to create or modify dashboards, continue with the Dashboard Guide  and PosAppDash in the Programmer's Guide.

Note

The Striim platform's TQL programming language is in many ways similar to SQL, particularly as regards SELECT statements. The Programmer's Guide assumes basic knowledge of SQL.

To learn to write Striim applications, continue with Programmer's Guide.