StreamBase New and Noteworthy

The on disk format for Query Tables has been updated for release 6.5.0. Before migrating your application to 6.5, move all files in your Query Table data directory to a backup location. Then proceed as follows, depending on how you use Query Tables:

StreamBase Studio now respects and preserves the layout status it detects for each individual EventFlow application or module. That is:

As before, you can create separate layout files for one or more application files using StreamBase → EventFlow Layout → Extract to Layout File. The Studio Preference setting to manage layout status now affects only newly created application files going forward. For details, see the rewritten EventFlow Layout Options page.

As of release 6.5.0, Studio no longer gives any special treatment to DLL or .so files stored at the root of a Studio workspace project. In previous releases, such files were presumed to be native library files that implement a custom C++ plugin. The removal of special treatment based on folder location means you must now add an explicit plugin or library element in the server configuration file for each DLL or .so file that you explicitly want to load as part of your StreamBase application.

In previous releases, StreamBase Server supported only the protocol specific to its own StreamBase release, and StreamBase clients built with previous releases had to connect to newer servers by means of the StreamBase Proxy Server, sbproxy. This limitation was lifted, and StreamBase Server now directly supports the protocols of previous StreamBase releases back through 3.7.

You no longer need to run sbproxy for the purpose of protocol matching, but sbproxy is still required to support SSL or LDAP secure connections to StreamBase Server. Clients can still connect to the server through sbproxy, which now passes protocol handling through to the server and displays an informational warning on the console.

You can now include a precompiled application archive (.sbar) version of the primary application file when creating a StreamBase bundle for deployment, if the archive file is present in the project folder. This works both when creating a bundle in Studio and at the command prompt, where you can now use the sbbundle -c command.

StreamBase Server was updated to start an application bundle using an .sbar file if it finds one in the bundle, and if the .sbar and server are from the same release. If the releases do not match, the server skips the .sbar file and starts the top-level EventFlow file in the bundle.

In previous releases, the CSV File Reader Adapter had the empty string as the default setting for its NULL string property. Starting with 6.5.0, this adapter has null as the default setting for the NULL string property, which aligns the CSV File Reader adapter more closely with the default null string used by the CSV File Writer adapter and with other StreamBase adapters.

In release 6.4.3, the External Process operator gained the ability to specify string instead of blob as the data type of fields added to the output tuple by the operator. As of release 6.5.0, string is the default type for such fields. See Using the External Process Operator.

Release 6.5.0 provides a unified installer for supported 64-bit Windows platforms. In previous releases, installing StreamBase on these platforms required running the standard 32-bit installer and then a second installer that overlaid the 64-bit programs and libraries. The installer for 64-bit Windows now performs in one pass all the actions of the former two-stage installation. Installing and using StreamBase on 64-bit Windows is described in Installing and Running StreamBase on 64-Bit Windows.

As is standard with StreamBase releases, the XML syntax of EventFlow files was updated to support the new features described on this page. When you use Studio 6.5 to open and save a module defined in a previous release, the file's format is automatically updated.

StreamBase Studio is now based on, and requires, Eclipse 3.5.1. This allows you to install third-party Eclipse plug-ins that support or require Eclipse 3.5, including plug-ins that add version control to Studio.

The Welcome page for StreamBase Studio uses a new layout that explains the available options without requiring the use of a mouse to hover over each button.

In the EventFlow Editor in StreamBase Studio, the tabs at the bottom (other than the Editor tab) are now shown in boldface if that tab has any content. The following example shows the Editor tab active, but the bold font tells you at a glance that there is at least one constant, named schema, or table schema defined in the Definitions tab, and there is either a module description or a custom icon specified in the Metadata tab.

The icon for the Chronicle Connection data construct was removed from the Data Construct drawer of the Palette view, and the former Chronicle adapters were reconfigured to work as standard StreamBase adapters. No functionality is lost with this change, and the databases formerly supported as Chronicle Connections are still supported, including the native library fast-load features for certain databases. If your StreamBase application accesses or loads a database formerly supported with a Chronicle Connection, that connection is automatically migrated when you open and save the application in release 6.5. If your server configuration file specified type="chronicle" in a data-source element, it is automatically migrated to type="jdbc".

StreamBase 6.5.0 introduces a new and clarified way to assemble the fields of the outgoing tuple in Query and Map operators, and to apply aggregate functions in the Aggregate operator. In the new interface, you specify field changes as a group, or one field at a time in separate tables. The separate tables apply to fields from the input stream, fields from the associated Query Table, and fields additional changes determined by expressions. The changes you specify are applied in top-down order, both in the order of tables in the tab, and in the order of field expressions in each table. See Output Settings Tab for a discussion of the new user interface.

You can now directly specify subfields for output by writing a fully qualified path using standard dot notation. For example, if the incoming schema for a Map operator has a field NYSEFeed of type tuple, with a subfield named symbol, you can use NYSEFeed.symbol in the Field Name column to directly add, replace, remove, or include the field in the output of the Map operator. You can use these fully qualified paths in the Field Name column of any table in the Output Settings tab of Map and Query operators, and in the Aggregate Functions tab of Aggregate operators.

In the same places you can use subfield path names, you can now use an asterisk wildcard to specify all fields of the incoming stream, or to specify all subfields of a tuple field. In the following example, the output settings for a Map operator specifies adding a new field of type tuple, OrigStream, to the output of the operator. Each field of the input stream is mapped to the same-named subfield of the OrigStream field. When using a wildcard in the Expression column, you must also use an asterisk in the Field Name column.

In the Output Settings tab for the Query operator in previous releases, for Insert operations, the Expressions option was unavailable. Using the new interface for the Output Settings tab, you can now add, replace, or remove fields based on expressions by using the Additional Expressions table.

In previous releases, when using the Query operator's Output Settings tab, Studio provided the default prefix input_ for fields from the input stream, _table for fields the current table, and, for updates, _old, for fields from the table before the update. When using the Aggregate operator, in the Aggregate Functions tab, Studio provided the default prefix input_. In release 6.5, Studio now defaults to no prefix. You can still specify a prefix in all the same cases.

Previous releases required you to use input1 as the qualifier of a field name (such as input1.fieldname), even though the Map operator has only one input. You can now specify input as the qualifier for fields in a Map operator's input stream.

The output stream gained the ability to specify a declared schema for outgoing tuples. The default configuration, as in previous releases, is that the schema for these components is inherited from upstream components and is shown read-only in the Properties view. However, you can now instead specify the exact schema you expect outgoing tuples to have, which allows StreamBase to apply typechecking to confirm or report departures from your declared schema.

The Union operator also gains the ability to specify a declared schema for outgoing tuples. In this case, the Require this schema option supplements the existing options to specify loose and strict typechecking of the schemas of the operator's input ports. As with output streams, specifying a declared schema allows StreamBase to apply typechecking to confirm or report departures from your declared schema.

This release introduces the table schema, which is a form of named schema for a set of Query Tables that completely defines the structure of those Query Tables, and ensures that all Query Tables in the set are identically defined. A table schema includes not only the table structure of a Query Table, but its primary and secondary indices as well. You can apply a table schema by name to two or more on-disk or in-memory Query Tables to quickly assign the same structure to those Query Tables, and you can import table schemas from modules in the Module Search Path. Table schemas are described in Using Table Schemas.

This release includes the new Drools operator in the Global Operators & Adapters drawer of the Palette view in StreamBase Studio. The Drools operator is a global Java operator that provides a way for StreamBase applications to implement rule-based decision-making in the course of an EventFlow application. This operator embeds version 5 of the Drools Expert rules engine, also known as JBoss Rules. You implement the operator by providing a rules file and a Java Interface file that describes the fields of interest in the operator's incoming tuple. See Using the Drools Operator and Drools Operator Sample.

When defining a dynamic variable, your updating expression might need to refer to more than one field in the updating stream to build your expression. Starting with release 6.5.0, you can qualify such field names with input. instead of repeating the updating stream's name. Thus, for a dynamic variable that updates from the sum of two fields, alpha and beta, in an updating input stream named UpdateVariable, you can specify either of the following as your updating expression:

UpdateVariable.alpha + UpdateVariable.beta

input.alpha + input.beta

You can now use the standard Eclipse Java Build Path mechanism to specify the location of a native library (DLL or .so file) called by Java source files or by a JAR file in a StreamBase project. In previous releases, the only way to specify such locations was with the library child element of the java-vm element of the server configuration file, and that method is still supported. See Java Build Path in the Project Properties page for instructions.

This release provides a new Container Connections field on the Advanced tab of the Properties view for both input and output streams. The field accepts a StreamBase expression that resolves to the qualified name of a stream in another container. There are some restrictions on container start order when using this feature, as described on Container Connections. This feature supplements and does not replace the other methods of establishing container connections, which remain available.

Application launches from Studio are simplified and no longer require two dialog boxes. Launch failures are now reported using the standard Eclipse mechanism.

Studio now supports setting any launch configuration to run in the background. This places the Starting StreamBase Server dialog sequence in the background so that control of Studio returns immediately after the launch. Large multimodule applications can take a moment to load and initialize, so this setting frees Studio for productive use while waiting for a large application to start. To specify this condition, edit the application's run configuration; in the Common tab, check the Launch in background checkbox and click Apply.

All the application monitoring and management functions of StreamBase Manager are now available automatically when you run applications in StreamBase Studio. The views that comprise the standalone StreamBase Manager utility are now available in the new SB Manager perspective in Studio. To view StreamBase Manager statistics for the running application, switch to the SB Manager perspective, which is automatically connected to the running server instance. You can go back and forth at will between the SB Manager and SB Test/Debug perspectives as you analyze your running application.

StreamBase Manager can still be run as a separate, standalone utility using its Start menu entry in Windows, or using the sbmanager command from the command prompt in UNIX.

The standalone StreamBase Manager utility no longer opens by default with a Welcome screen. If no connections have been made, Manager now provides reminder messages in each view to help you get started. If you have previously connected to a running server, Manager remembers and shows the URLs of its last connections. Right-click the URL of interest and select Connect from the context menu to reconnect to the same server and port.

The Help system booklet for StreamBase Manager and the SB Manager perspective is now available at the same top level as the primary StreamBase documentation in the Eclipse Help viewer.

In release 6.5.0, the SB Trace Debugger perspective replaces the SB Trace Browser perspective. As before, you can use this perspective to review and analyze runtime trace files generated for a running application, as described in Runtime Tracing. New in 6.5.0 is the ability to debug through a trace file, line by line, with automatic highlighting of the current place in the associated EventFlow module.

Release 6.5.0 offers a third launch mode for running applications in Studio. In addition to Run and Debug modes, you can now start an application in Trace mode, and you can edit and store Trace mode launch configurations in the same way as Run and Debug mode configurations. When you run an application in Trace mode, the following sequence occurs:

Trace files generated from a running application are now saved with UTF-8 encoding. This preserves any Unicode characters in tuple fields in the trace file.

Messages reporting an error in the configuration or use of a component are shown in the Properties view and in other Studio views. These error messages are now more detailed and provide better reporting of the location of the error. Error messages now report the exact field or table cell with the problem, and provide a hyperlink to take you to that location. Errors in a component in a referenced module now report a path that leads you to the exact inner module that contains the failing operator.

In previous releases, when you dragged an adapter or global Java operator icon from the Palette to the canvas, the newly dropped icon's initial name was a generic one, such as Java1 or InputAdapter1. As of release 6.5.0, newly dropped icons receive a name based on the name of the dragged adapter or global operator: CSVFileReader1, ExternalProcess3, and so on. If you program custom operators or adapters, the new default name for dropped targets is based on the name defined with setShortDisplayName().

Select any schema-bearing component in the EventFlow Editor canvas, right-click, and select Schema → Refactor to Named Schema from the context menu. This opens the Promote to Named Schema dialog, which allows you to save the schema of the selected component as a named schema, accessible in the Definitions tab for the current module. At the same time, you can ask Studio to locate components in the current module that have a compatible private schema, and to apply the newly named schema to some or all of those components. See Promoting a Private Schema to a Named Schema.

On Windows platforms only, the context menu for projects in the Package Explorer view now contains the Open StreamBase Command Prompt Here action. Invoke this action to open a StreamBase Command Prompt whose current directory is the selected project's directory in the Studio workspace.

The keyboard shortcut X X is used to quickly draw connection arcs between two selected components in the EventFlow canvas. As of 6.5.0, the X X shortcut is extended to work with more than two component selections. You can drop several stream and operator icons on the canvas, select them all, then use X X to draw all the arcs between components in left to right order. If the selection includes a data construct and there is an unequivocal connection to Query operators available, X X also automatically draws the association arcs. See Keyboard Shortcuts for further detail.

The autocompletion feature is invoked with Ctrl+Space when editing an expression in a Properties view table cell. Autocompletion now takes into account any currently selected text in the cell when presenting its completion proposals.

Studio keeps a history of the selections you make among individual components in the EventFlow canvas. You can use Alt+Left to move backwards in that selection history, and Alt+Right to move forward. These keys go back or forward to the previous or next selected component in the history, even if that selection is in another EventFlow Editor canvas.

You can also navigate your selection history using the yellow left and right arrows in the main Studio toolbar . Use the drop-down arrows next to these arrow icons to see your navigation history in list form. Select a location in the list to navigate directly to that location.

In previous releases, the Create Group action did not appear in the EventFlow Editor's context menu unless two or more components were selected. You can now create a group starting with only one icon selected, adding components to the group later.

When running or debugging a top-level application that references one or more modules, the Output Stream Selector dialog (invoked from the Application Output view) now organizes the available output streams hierarchically, to help you locate the streams of interest. See Select Multiple Streams.

When using StreamBase Studio's Visual Debugger for EventFlow applications, you can now inspect the contents of in-memory Query Tables in the Variables view.

If your EventFlow application includes custom Java code, you can now switch back and forth between debugging your EventFlow application and debugging your Java code. Use the Toggle debugging mode button on the right side of the Debug view's toolbar to switch modes.

The efficiency of the visual debugger was improved to allow debugging of larger applications.

Internal changes were made to significantly improve the performance of StreamBase Server when processing an application with 50 to 100 fields per tuple.

Internal changes were made to significantly improve the performance of StreamBase Server when processing an application with a large number of connected and active dequeue clients. In one test scenario with 80 dequeue clients, the tuples per second processing rate was two to three times faster than with previous releases.

To help administer multiple client versions connecting to StreamBase Server 6.5, the sbadmin listConnections command now reports the protocol family for each connected client. The protocol family is effectively a superset of the StreamBase release number that categorizes StreamBase releases that use the same server connection protocol. For example, the connection protocol did not change between StreamBase releases 6.4 and 6.5, so clients from both versions report 6.5 in the protocol family field in the output of listConnections. The protocol family version generally changes for StreamBase releases that add a new data type.

The sbadmin listConnections command now reports the name of the input stream each client is connected to.

StreamBase 6.5.0 includes new support for design patterns where one or more connected clients consume data at a slower rate than the server produces it. In previous releases, the server automatically disconnected unresponsive clients on the presumption that they were hung or had lost communication. The new support for slow-dequeuing clients is implemented as a new parameter setting, slow-dequeue-client-wait, for the page-pool element of the server configuration file; and as changed behavior for the existing max-client-pages parameter. These settings affect all connected clients. See the page-pool section of the StreamBase Server Configuration XML page for details on these settings.

You can now specify param elements as an alias for parameter elements, which are both child elements of the module-parameter element.

Automatic HA is a set of time-saving StreamBase configuration settings that let you quickly and automatically implement commonly used aspects of high-availability design patterns. The currently supported automatic HA features are automatic leadership control and automatic table replication. See Automatic HA.

The HA and table-repl samples were reworked to illustrate both automatic HA and manual customization. Both samples now provide a basic version of the sample that uses automatic HA features, and a custom version of the sample that illustrates the same design pattern accomplished with manual configuration settings, which provides more control over options. See High Availability Sample and Query Table Replication Sample.

The JDBC Query sample, formerly part of the operators group of samples, is now provided in its own sample directory. This allows the operators sample group to load in Studio without a warning. As before, the JDBC Query sample must be configured with a data-source entry in the sample's server configuration file before it can be used.

A new sample is provided in STREAMBASE_HOME/sample/logging-log4j that illustrates how to use the logging back end provided by StreamBase to load and use log4j as the logging front end. The sample also illustrates how to write a simple Java operator that writes log messages to the console, and how to set log4j logging levels in that operator.

The following adapters were removed from the StreamBase base kit:

When using a JDBC database as the source of input tuples for a feed simulation, you must make the database vendor's JDBC JAR file available to Studio. Previous releases recommended copying the JAR file to a certain location in the StreamBase installation. Starting with this release, you can also use the new STUDIO_BOOT_CLASSPATH environment variable as an alternative.

Independent of either method above, in order to use the command-line sbfeedsim with a JDBC data source, you must place the JDBC JAR file in the standard CLASSPATH. These subjects are discussed in Feed Simulation with a JDBC Data Source.

The default setting of the jdbc-batch-timeout-ms parameter of the data-source element in the server configuration file was changed to 60000 ms (60 seconds). In previous releases, the default was –1, which specified not flushing a JDBC batch buffer based on a time interval.

StreamBase 6.5.0 includes the following changes in the StreamBase client API:

The StreamBase expression language was extended with the following new functions:

StreamBase release 6.5.0 includes the following changes in third-party libraries:

StreamBase release 6.5.0 includes the following documentation updates, corrections, and new pages that were incorporated independent of the new features discussed above:

In previous releases, when you selected a StreamBase operator, data construct, or stream in the canvas to show its Properties view, clicking the Properties view's circled-? Help button opened the Studio Help system directly onto the documentation page for the selected component. Previous releases offered this Help button feature for any component taken from the Operators, Data Constructs, or Streams drawers of the Palette view.

As of release 6.5.0, this Help button feature is extended to work with StreamBase-supplied adapters and global Java operators found in the Global Operators & Adapters drawer. As before, the selection is tab-specific. That is, for many adapters, the Help page opens directly onto the section of the page that discusses the currently selected tab in the Properties view.

For module references, custom Java operators, or custom Java adapters, clicking the Help button opens a generic Help page appropriate for the component category.

StreamBase Studio is now based on Eclipse 3.4. This allows you to install third-party Eclipse plug-ins that support or require Eclipse 3.4, including plug-ins that add version control to Studio.

To support the new features described below, Studio has the following changes to its user interface:

In previous releases, dynamic variables were declared in the Properties view for an operator or adapter, and their scope was the containing operator or adapter. Starting in this release, dynamic variables are declared in the new Dynamic Variables tab of the EventFlow Editor, and their scope is the containing module. See Using Dynamic Variables.

When you use release 6.4 to open a prior release's EventFlow application that contains operator-scoped dynamic variables, you may encounter one or more of the following:

This release adds support for constants defined at the module level. Use the EventFlow Editor's new Definitions tab to manage constants as well as named schemas and imports. You designate the value of a constant with an expression, which is calculated once, when the module is initialized. In StreamSQL, use the new CREATE CONSTANT statement to define module-scoped constants. See Defining Constants.

This release adds the ability to import all or a selection of the named schemas and constants from another module to the current module. The modules from which you can import must be in the current module's Module Search Path. For large, multi-module applications, this allows you to define commonly used schemas and constants in a central module, and import them from the central module as needed by other modules in the application. Manage module imports in the new Definitions tab of the EventFlow Editor. In StreamSQL, use the new IMPORT statement for the same purpose. See Using Module Imports.

Studio now provides an optional edit window for editing long expressions in operator and adapter Properties views. To open the edit window, click to select the expression field of interest, then click the ellipsis (three dots) on the lower left of the field, or press F2.

This opens a resizable edit window for the field, which allows you to insert returns and spaces to style the expression for readability. Spaces and returns in the expression are preserved in the EventFlow file and persist between editing sessions. The auto-completion feature introduced in release 6.3 operates as expected in the edit window. Press F1 to open the Streams and Functions tabs of the Properties view alongside the edit window.

When done, click OK or press Ctrl+Enter to save your edits and return to the Properties view.

This release allows you to comment out or disable a branch of an EventFlow application. You might do so when trying to isolate a problem, or you might disable portions of an application during development that are only needed at deployment time. Disabled branches appear greyed out on the canvas, as in the example below. When running an application with a disabled branch, tuples do not flow through any disabled branches.

This feature is described in the Studio Reference, in the following section: Commenting Out.

Release 6.2 added the ability to profile a running StreamBase application to gather statistics about the operators, threads, and streams in the application as it runs. This release add Studio support for profiling. You can now see statistics for the application currently running in Studio by opening the Profiler view in the SB Test/Debug perspective. Click Start Profiling to begin the display of statistics, which refreshes every second.

Remember that the profiling system shows meaningful statistics only for operators that have run for a while with a significant amount of data, and will show zero otherwise. Click the Include Operators with zero time button in the view's toolbar to see a row for each operator in the application regardless of the statistics gathered. See Profiling StreamBase Applications for details.

This release adds a fourth StreamBase-specific perspective to Studio, the SB Trace Browser perspective. Use Window → Open Perspective → Other or the Open Perspective button on the Studio toolbar to open the perspective.

Runtime tracing was added in release 6.2.1, as described in Runtime Tracing, and provided several ways to generate a trace file that records every tuple passing through an application, optionally filtered by operator name. This release provides a new Trace Browser to open and examine trace files, and to search for patterns of interest in trace files. You must still set up for and generate your trace files as described in Runtime Tracing. The Trace Browser only opens traces produced with release 6.4 or newer. Traces generated with earlier releases cannot be read.

In the Feed Simulation Editor, in the Simulation Streams section, the Add button was replaced with two new buttons, New Stream and Copy Existing Stream. Use the New Stream button much like the old Add button to define the fields of an input stream to feed, field by field. To save time, you can instead use Copy Existing Stream to select an input stream in any module in your workspace. The selected stream and its fields are then automatically copied to the Simulation Streams table.

The External Process Operator gained a new checkbox, Run this command asynchronously, in the Advanced tab of its Properties view. Enable this checkbox to run the specified command without holding any server locks. This allows you to call sbadmin shutdown and other such commands that attempt to place locks, without causing a deadlock situation. See Using the External Process Operator.

You can now specify values for module parameters when defining a run or debug configuration in Studio. This is only relevant for launch configurations that specify one or more containers in which to run an application's modules.

Use this feature to assign runtime values to predefined parameters. As is standard with module parameters, you must declare module parameters in the Parameters tab of the EventFlow Editor, and optionally provide a default value. Then, in the Run/Debug Configurations dialog, with a StreamBase configuration selected, select the Containers tab. Select a container row in the first table, then specify one or more parameter name and value pairs in the second table. Each parameter name must match a name you defined in the EventFlow Editor's Parameters tab.

You can now specify the settings for environment variables when defining a run or debug configuration in Studio. In the Run/Debug Configurations dialog, with a StreamBase configuration selected, select the Environment tab. You can define new, application-specific variables, or you can override or append to existing system environment variables. Use Select to show a current list of the system's environment variables, from which you can select one or more. You cannot use this feature to replace or override the STREAMBASE_HOME, PATH, STREAMBASE_JVM_ARGS, or STREAMBASE_LOG_LEVEL variables.

The StreamBase portion of the Properties dialog for projects was reorganized and clarified. To set project properties, select the top-level folder of a project in the Package Explorer, right-click, and select Properties from the context menu. The settings for the Module Search Path and Resource Search Path were split into separate child pages, and the top StreamBase page now contains explanations of the available settings. You can now specify which subfolders of the current project's folder contain modules or operator resources. Module and resource folders specified in the current project are automatically exported to any project that references the current project.

To help distinguish the purpose of different components in the canvas for large applications, the Query operator now has an overlay icon to show whether it represents a Read, Write, or Delete operation.

Query operation type	Overlay image	Icon with overlay
Read	open book
Write	pencil
Delete	eraser

Similarly, the icon for Query Tables now shows with a green dot if the table is marked Shared, or with a green triangle if the table is marked Placeholder. Standard tables marked Private have no overlay.

Studio now automatically adds a classpath variable named STREAMBASE_HOME to the Eclipse Classpath Variables preferences in Window → Preferences, then Java → Build Path → Classpath Variables. You can then use the variable when setting paths to libraries and JAR files to be included in a project's Java Build Path. For example, include STREAMBASE_HOME/lib/sbclient.jar.

The variable's setting is generally the same as the environment variable of the same name, but its value is taken from the StreamBase Installation Location setting on the StreamBase Studio preferences page. If you change the path setting on that preferences page, the classpath variable automatically updates to match.

In the Properties view for the Aggregate operator, the Group Options tab now has a self-explanatory checkbox, Omit Group By fields in output.

On 64-bit Windows systems, with the 64-bit Windows StreamBase overlay kit installed, Studio now runs the 64-bit version of StreamBase Server by default. To override this default, customize a run or debug launch configuration and check the Use 32-bit StreamBase Server checkbox on the Main page of the launch configuration dialog.

The StreamBase Manager utility gains a new Streams view in this release. This view shows, for the currently connected application, all input and output streams with a count of tuples that have passed through each stream. As with other StreamBase Manager views, the Total column counts tuples passed since monitoring began, while the Latest column counts tuples in the most recent snapshot interval. See StreamBase Manager.

A Streams view was added to the console-based sbmonitor utility in release 6.3. This change in StreamBase Manager brings the two monitoring utilities back to parity.

This release adds several new ways to assign runtime values to module parameters, which must be already declared in the module. Declare module parameters in the Parameters tab of the EventFlow Editor, and optionally provide a default value. In StreamSQL, use the CREATE PARAMETERS statement.

The new ways to assign module parameter values are:

Runtime tracing allows you to generate tuple trace files as described in Runtime Tracing. This feature was changed to generate two trace files. The trace file itself now has an .sbtrace extension. The command also generates a trace metadata file with .sbtrace-meta extension, which is used by the new Trace Browser described above.

You can now specify that trace files are automatically compressed with Gzip by adding the new --traceCompress option to the sbadmin command that generates your trace files. In this case, the trace file is generated with .sbtrace.gz extension. The new Trace Browser automatically unzips compressed trace files when reading them.

In the Query operator, when configured for a read operation, you can specify the fields output from the operator with expressions specified in the Output Settings tab. This release adds a new qualifier, metadata, that can be used as part of such expressions when the associated data construct is a Query Table. You can also use the metadata keyword with some of its values in the lookup expression for the read query. The accepted values for metadata are the following:

The metadata values are explained in The metadata Qualifier in the Query operator's topic.

There is a new Java property, streambase.java-operator.stacktrace-on-warn that can be specified either with the jvm-args or sysproperty elements in the server configuration file. When set to true, exception stack traces from Java operators and adapters are displayed on the server's console.

The append() function was extended to accept more than one list element to append to its argument list. See append().

In addition to the new CREATE CONSTANT and IMPORT statements described above, the syntax of StreamSQL has the following changes:

The StreamBase Smart Order Routing Framework is validated with, and fully supports, release 6.4. Contact StreamBase Systems for more information.

In previous releases, Studio's Run and Debug functions had default settings, and you created a launch configuration manually when you wanted to specify non-default settings for a particular run or debug session.

Starting with release 6.4.0, a new launch configuration is automatically created for you the first time you run or debug a module, with the configuration taking the name of the top-level application being run. The next time you run or debug that module, Studio reuses the saved launch configuration. These launch configurations are created with default settings, and you can edit or copy them to specify custom settings.

There is now a class of typecheck errors that cannot be marked on the EventFlow canvas with color changes, including global application errors that are not assigned to any particular component. In these cases, Studio flags the application's tab in the EventFlow Editor with a red X, and shows a message across the top of the canvas reminding you to look in the Problems view for details on the error.

In StreamBase releases 3.7 and earlier, Studio project folders always contained a subfolder named Resources that was automatically placed in the current project's operator resource search path. Starting with release 5.0, a StreamBase-specific project directory structure was no longer required, but, for compatibility with imported projects from earlier versions, Studio continued to honor the special meaning of any project subfolder named Resources. However, starting with release 6.4.0, subfolders named Resources are no longer automatically placed in the operator resource search path.

As a consequence of moving to Eclipse 3.4, the configuration folder for StreamBase Studio has a name change. The location for StreamBase 6.3 and earlier was:

%APPDATA%\StreamBase\StreamBase Studio n.m Configuration

where n.m is the release number. Starting with release 6.4, the configuration folder is now:

%APPDATA%\StreamBase\Streambase Studio n.m

For Linux, the new configuration folder location is:

~/.streambase/streambase-studio-n.m

The Java client API was extended with the following methods. See the Javadoc documentation for details on these additions.

You can now specify a Java.util.LinkedHashMap when defining controls for a custom Java operator or adapter. Studio displays these controls as a grid where the end-user can specify key-value pairs as parameters for your operator or adapter. To add a control of this type with the New StreamBase Java Operator or New StreamBase Embedded Adapter wizards, select Map <String, String> from the property drop-down list in the New Operator/Adapter Property dialog.

The version of the Sun JDK installed for private use by StreamBase is now 1.6.0_12. As before, you can override this installed default to use a different supported JDK as described in Using an External JDK. The supported JDK versions are listed in Supported Configurations.

StreamBase now supports building C++ client applications for Windows using Visual C++ 9.0, a component of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2008. See Configuring Visual C++ for setup instructions.

This support is in addition to the existing Windows compiler support. Thus, StreamBase now supports three compilers for building C++ clients for 32-bit Windows:

For 64-bit Windows, you can build C++ clients with Visual C++ 8.0 or 9.0.

StreamBase requires G++ 3.4 through 4.2 for building C++ clients or custom functions on UNIX. StreamBase does not support building clients or custom functions with G++ 4.3, which is the default compiler on newer Linux distributions. On such distributions, install GCC and G++ 4.2, and set the CC and CXX environment variables before building StreamBase C++ code, including StreamBase samples that include C++ code. For example:

export CC=gcc-4.2
export CXX=g++-4.2

As an unsupported feature, Linux installations of StreamBase now include a Python version of the StreamBase client API. Advanced users who wish to use this version of the API can find documentation in /opt/streambase/doc/apidocs/python. The Python API is provided without support, and issues reported with this API cannot be addressed at this time. This feature is provided for the benefit of early adopters, and is subject to change based on customer feedback.