Write SQL queries
Transform data from the CDF staging area into a data model using built-in and custom Spark SQL queries. Select Switch to SQL editor on the Transform data page to create a transformation in Spark SQL. This article describes the queries and explains how you can load data incrementally.
The SQL editor offers built-in code completion and built-in Spark SQL functions and Cognite custom SQL functions.
Your changes won't be kept if you switch from the SQL editor to the mapping editor.
Read from a CDF staging table
To select data from a CDF staging table, use the syntax mydb.mytable
:
select
*
from
database-name.table-name
If your database or table name contains special characters, enclose the name in backticks, for example `my-db`.`my table`
.
Avoid schema inference
Transformations infer schemas in the CDF staging table, but this process only uses a subset of all the rows in the table. You can avoid schema inference and write a schema fitted your data.
To avoid schema inference:
select
*
from
cdf_raw("database-name", "table-name")
This returns data with the schema key:STRING
, lastUpdatedTime:TIMESTAMP
, columns:STRING
, where the columns
string contains the JSON value encoded as a string.
Here's an example of how to enforce a user-defined schema:
select
get_json_object(columns, '$.externalId') AS externalId,
timestamp(get_json_object(columns, '$.timestamp')) AS timestamp,
double(get_json_object(columns, '$.value')) AS value
from
cdf_raw("database-name", "table-name")
Read from other CDF resource types
To select other CDF resource types, use the syntax _cdf.resource_type
.
select * from _cdf.events
The supported resource types are:
_cdf.events
_cdf.assets
_cdf.files
_cdf.timeseries
_cdf.sequences
_cdf_sequences.<sequence_externalId>
_cdf.datapoints
_cdf.stringdatapoints
_cdf.labels
_cdf.relationships
Load data incrementally
When reading from staging tables, you probably want to transform only the data that has changed since the last transformation job ran. To achieve this, you can filter on the lastUpdatedTime
column to query for the rows that have changed after a specific timestamp.
When filtering on lastUpdatedTime
, the filter is pushed down to the RAW service itself, so this query can be performed efficiently.
For example: select * from mydb.mytable where lastUpdatedTime > to_timestamp(123456)
.
Instead of encoding the timestamp directly in the query and manually keeping it up to date every time new data has been processed, you can use the is_new
function. This function returns true
when a row has changed since the last time the transformation was run and false
otherwise.
The first time you run a transformation using the query below, all the rows of mytable
will be processed:
select * from mydb.mytable where is_new("mydb_mytable", lastUpdatedTime)
If the transformation completes successfully, the second run will only process rows that have changed since the first run.
If the transformation fails, is_new
filters the same rows the next time the transformation is run. This ensures that there is no data loss in the transformation from source to destination.
Incremental load is disabled when previewing query results. That is, is_new
will always return true
for all rows.
Each is_new
filter is identified by a name (for example,"mydb_mytable"
) and can be set to any constant string. This allows you to differentiate between multiple calls to is_new
in the same query and use is_new
to filter on multiple tables. To easily identify the different filters, we recommend that you use the name of the table as the name of the is_new
filter.
Backfill
To process all the data even if it hasn't changed since the last transformation, change the name of the is_new
filter, for example, by adding a postfix with an incrementing number (e.g. "mydb_mytable_1"
).
This is especially useful when the logic of the query changes and data that has already been imported needs to be updated accordingly.
Custom SQL functions
In addition to the built-in Spark SQL functions, we also provide a set of custom SQL functions to help you write efficient transformations.
When a function expects var_args
, it allows a variable number of arguments of any type, including star *
.
get_names
- get_names(var_args): Array[String]
Returns an array of the field names of a struct or row.
Example
select get_names(*) from mydb.mytable
-- Returns the column names of 'mydb.mytable'
select get_names(some_struct.*) from mydb.mytable
-- Returns the field names of 'some_struct'
cast_to_strings
- cast_to_strings(var_args): Array[String]
Casts the arguments to an array of strings. It handles array, struct and map types by casting it to JSON strings.
Example
select cast_to_strings(*) from mydb.mytable
-- Returns the values of all columns in 'mydb.mytable' as strings
to_metadata
- to_metadata(var_args): Map[String, String]
Creates metadata compatible type from the arguments. In practice it does map_from_arrays(get_names(var_args), cast_to_strings(var_args))
. Use this function when you want to transform your columns or structures into a format that fits the metadata field in CDF.
Example
select to_metadata(*) from mydb.mytable
-- Creates a metadata structure from all the columns found in 'mydb.mytable'
to_metadata_except
- to_metadata_except(excludeFilter: Array[String], var_args)
Returns a metadata structure (Map[String, String]
) where strings found in excludeFilter
will exclude keys from var_args
.
Use this function when you want to put most, but not all, columns into metadata, for example to_metadata_except(array("someColumnToExclude"), *)
Example
select to_metadata_except(array("myCol"), myCol, testCol) from mydb.mytable
-- Creates a map where myCol is filtered out.
-- The result in this case will be Map("testCol" -> testCol.value.toString)
asset_ids
Attempts to find asset names under the given criteria and return the IDs of the matching assets. Three variations are available.
Attempts to find given assetNames
in all assets.
- asset_ids(assetNames: Array[String]): Array[BigInt]
Attempts to find assetNames
in the asset hierarchy with rootAssetName
as their root asset.
- asset_ids(assetNames: Array[String], rootAssetName: String): Array[BigInt]
Attempts to find assetNames
that belong to the datasetIds
.
- asset_ids(assetNames: Array[String], datasetIds: Array[Long]): Array[BigInt]
Attempts to find assetNames
that belong to the datasetIds
under the rootAssetName
.
- asset_ids(assetNames: Array[String], rootAssetName: String, datasetIds: Array[Long]): Array[BigInt]
See Assets for more information about assets in CDF.
The entire job will be aborted if asset_ids()
did not find any matching assets.
Example
select asset_ids(array("PV10", "PV11"))
select asset_ids(array("PV10", "PV11"), "MyBoat")
select asset_ids(array("PV10", "PV11"), array(254343, 23433, 54343))
select asset_ids(array("PV10", "PV11"), array(dataset_id("pv-254343-ext-id"), 23433, 54343))
select asset_ids(array("PV10", "PV11"), "MyBoat", array(dataset_id("pv-254343-ext-id"), 23433, 54343))
is_new
- is_new(name: String, version: long)
Returns true
if the version provided is higher than the version found with the specified name, based on the last time the transformation was run. version can be any column of dataype long
with only incremental values ingested. A popular example is the lastUpdatedTime
column.
If the transformation completes successfully, the next transformation job only processes rows that have changed since the start of the last successfully completed transformation job.
If the transformation fails,
is_new
processes all rows that have changed since the start of the last successful run. This ensures no data loss in the transformation from source to destination. See also Load data incrementally.
If you're using more than one occurrence of is_new()
in one transformation, we recommend that you use different variable names. This guarantees that subqueries within one transformation don't override the lastUpdatedTime
record before the transformation is completed.
Example
select * from mydb.mytable where is_new("mydb_mytable_version", lastUpdatedTime)
-- Returns only rows that have changed since the last successful run
dataset_id
- dataset_id(externalId: String): BigInt
Attempts to find the id
of the given data set by externalId
and returns the id
if the externalId
exists.
Example
select dataset_id("EXAMPLE_DATASET") as dataSetId
cdf_assetSubtree
- cdf_assetSubtree(externalId: String or id: BigInt): Table[Asset]
Returns an asset subtree under a specific asset in an asset hierarchy, that is, all the child assets for a specific asset in an asset hierarchy are returned.
If the total size of subtree exceeds 100,000 assets, an error will be returned.
Example
select * from cdf_assetSubtree('externalId of an asset')
select * from cdf_assetSubtree('id of an asset')
cdf_nodes
- cdf_nodes(space of the view: String, externalId of the view: String, version of the view: String): Table[Nodes]
- cdf_nodes(): Table[Nodes]
Returns nodes in the CDF project as a table.
cdf_nodes()
returnsspace
andexternalId
of all nodes in the CDF project.cdf_nodes("space of the view: String", "externalId of the view: String"," version of the view: String")
returns a table with nodes ingested withview
as reference.
The table containsspace
andexternalId
columns and columns for each property in theview
.
Example
select * from cdf_nodes('space of the view: String', 'externalId of the view: String', 'version of the view: String')
select * from cdf_nodes()
cdf_edges
- cdf_edges("space of the view: String", "externalId of the view: String", "version of the view: String"): Table[Edges]
- cdf_edges(): Table[Edges]
Returns edges in the CDF project as a table.
cdf_edges()
returnsspace
,externalId
,startNode
,endNode
, andtype
of all edges in a CDF project.cdf_edges(space of the view: String, externalId of the view: String, version of the view: String)
returns a table with edges ingested withview
as reference.
The table containsspace
,externalId
,startNode
,endNode
, andtype
columns and columns for each property in theview
.
Example
select * from cdf_edges('space of the view: String', 'externalId of the view: String', 'version of the view: String')
select * from cdf_edges()
node_reference
- node_reference("space: String", "externalId: String"): STRUCT<"space:string", "externalId:string">
- node_reference("externalId: String"): STRUCT<"space:String", "externalId:String">
To reference a node
, you need the space externalId
of the node and the node externalId
. Typically, you reference a node when writing or filtering edges based on startNode
and endNode
.
node_reference
accepts the single parameter externalId
of the node. The target/instance space set at the transformation is used as the space externalId
of the node.
If you're using node_reference
for filtering i.e. in your where
clause, you must add the space externalId
and the node externalId
.
Example
select node_reference('space externalId of a node', 'externalId of a node') as startNode, node_reference('space externalId of a node', 'externalId of a node') as endNode, ... from mydb.mytable
select node_reference('externalId of a node') as startNode, node_reference('externalId of a node') as endNode, ... from mydb.mytable
select * from cdf_edges('space of the view: String', 'externalId of the view: String', 'version of the view: String') where startNode = node_reference('space externalId of a node', 'externalId of a node') or node_reference('space externalId of a node', 'externalId of a node')
type_reference
- type_reference("space: String", "externalId: String"): STRUCT<"space:String", "externalId:String">
- type_reference("externalId: String"): STRUCT<"space:String", "externalId:String">
All edges have type
. To filter edges based on type
, use type_reference
and provide the space externalId
and the edge type externalId
. If you're writing edges with a view
reference, you must specify the edge type using type_reference
.
type_reference
accepts the single parameter externalId
of the edge type. The target/instance space set at the transformation is used as the space externalId
of the edge type.
If you're using type_reference
for filtering i.e. in your where
clause, you must add the space externalId
and the edge type externalId
.
Example
select node_reference('space externalId of a node', 'externalId of a node') as startNode, type_reference('space externalId of a node', 'externalId of a node') as endNode, ... from mydb.mytable
select * from cdf_edges('space of the view: String', 'externalId of the view: String', 'version of the view: String') where type = type_reference('space externalId of a node', 'externalId of a node') or type_reference('space externalId of a node', 'externalId of a node')
select * from cdf_edges() where type = type_reference('space externalId of a node', 'externalId of a node') or type_reference('space externalId of a node', 'externalId of a node')
cdf_data_models
- cdf_data_models("data model space: String", "data model externalId: String", "data model version: String", "type external id: String" ): Table[Nodes]
- cdf_data_models("data model space: String", "data model externalId: String", "data model version: String", "type external id: String", "property in type containing the relationship: String" ): Table[Edges]
These functions follow the data model UI lingo and make it easy to retrieve the data written to types
and relationship
.
To retrieve data from a type
in your data model, provide the data model's space
, externalId
, version
and the externalId
of the type as input parameters to cdf_data_models
.
To retrieve data from a relationship
in your data model, provide the data model's space
, externalId
, version
,the externalId
of the type
containing the relationship and the name of the relationship property
in the type
as input parameters to cdf_data_models
.
Example
select * from cdf_data_models('data model space: String', 'data model externalId: String', 'data model version: String', 'type external id: String')
select * from cdf_data_models('data model space: String', 'data model externalId: String', 'data model version: String', 'type external id: String', 'property in type where relationship is defined: String')
Disabled Spark SQL functions
We currently don't support using these Spark SQL functions when you transform data:
xpath
xpath_boolean
xpath_double
xpath_float
xpath_int
xpath_number
xpath_short
xpath_string
xpath_long
java_method
reflect