The Kinesis importer connects to the specified Amazon Kinesis stream and writes the records into the VoltDB database. Kinesis streams let you aggregate data from multiple sources, such as click streams and media feeds, which is then pushed as streaming data to the application. The VoltDB Kinesis importer acts as a target application for the Kinesis Stream. The data is decoded according to the specified format — comma-separated values (CSV) by default — and is inserted into the VoltDB database using the specified stored procedure.

When import starts, the importer first checks to make sure the specified stored procedure exists in the database schema. If not (for example, when you first create a database and before a schema is loaded), the importer issues periodic warnings to the console.

Once the specified stored procedure is declared, the importer looks for the specified Kinesis stream. If the stream cannot be found or accessed (for example, if the keys don't match), the importer reports an error and stops. You will need to restart import once this error condition is corrected. You can restart import using any of the following methods:

If the stream is found and can be accessed, the importer starts fetching data and submitting it to the stored procedure to insert into the database. In the simplest case, you can use the default insert procedure for a table to insert records into a single table. For more complex data you can write your own import stored procedure to interpret the data and insert it into the appropriate table(s).

Table 15.8, “Kinesis Import Properties” lists the allowable properties for the Kinesis importer. You can also specify properties associated with the formatter, as described in Table 15.9, “CSV and TSV Formatter Properties”.