You can apply an Aggregation profile to any number of workflow configurations.

Preparations for your Profile

Each Aggregation profile stores sessions of a specific Session UDR type that you define in ultra. This means that your Aggregation profile configuration must include a session UDR type. See the example below:

Example - Defining a Session UDR type in an Ultra Configuration

session SessionUDRType {
   int intField;
   string strField;
   list<drudr> udrList;
};

It is recommended that you keep the session UDR as small as possible. A larger UDR decreases performance compared to a small one.

Note!

Take particular care when updating the Ultra formats. It is not possible to collect data from the Aggregation session storage if the corresponding UDR has been renamed. However, if you change the format definition, you can still collect the data.

Changes to the formats are handled as follows:

Default values are assigned to fields that are added or renamed.
Fields that have been removed are ignored.
Default values are assigned to fields with data types that have been changed.

For further information on Ultra formats, see Ultra Format.

Profile Configuration

To create an Aggregation profile, go to the Configuration icon and select the profile from the list.

The profile consists of three tabs:

Session Tab
Association Tab
Storage Tab
Advanced Tab

Session Tab

In the Session tab you can browse to and select a Session UDR Type and configure the Storage selection settings.

Setting

Description

Session UDR Type

Click Browse to search for the Session UDR type that you want to use. See Preparations for your Profile above for information on creating a Session UDR type.

Storage

Select the type of storage for aggregation sessions. The available settings are File Storage, Couchbase, Redis and Elasticsearch.

File Storage can be used in batch and real-time workflows.
Couchbase and Redis can only be used in real-time workflows. These storage types allow highly available systems with geographic redundancy. The session data that is replicated within the storage is available across workflows, ECs, and systems. This serves to minimize data loss in failover scenarios.
Note!

Data stored in Couchbase or Redis is not available in the Aggregation Inspector(3.0).
Elasticsearch can only be used in batch workflows.

Association Tab

You use the Association tab to configure rules that are used to match an incoming UDR with a session. Every UDR type requires a set of rules that are processed in a certain order. In most cases only one rule per incoming UDR type is defined.

Setting	Description
UDR Types	Click the Add button to select a UDR type in the UDR Internal Format dialog. The UDR type that you select then appears in this field. A UDR type may have a list of rules attached to it. When you select the UDR type, its rules appear as separate tabs to the right in the Aggregation profile configuration.
Primary Expression	The Primary Expression is optional. You can enter an APL code expression that is to be evaluated before the ID Fields are evaluated. If the evaluation result is `false` the rule is ignored and the evaluation continues with the next rule. Use the `input` variable to write this filtering expression.
ID Fields	Click the Add button to select additional ID Fields in the ID Fields dialog. These fields, along with the Additional Expression settings, enable to determine whether a UDR belongs to an existing session or not. If the contents of the selected fields match the contents of a session, and an Additional Expression evaluation results in `true` , the UDR belongs to the session. Note! Ensure that the selected fields are of the same type and appear in the same order for all the rules that are defined for the agent.
Additional Expression	The Additional Expression is optional. Enter an APL code expression that is to be evaluated with the ID Fields. Use the `input` variable to write this filtering expression. This setting is useful when you have several UDR types with a varying number of ID Fields to be consolidated. Having several UDR types requires the ID fields to be equal in number and type. If one of the types requires additional fields that do not have any counterpart in the other type or types, these must be evaluated in the Additional Expression field. Save the field contents as a session variable, and compare the new UDRs with it. Note! When using Additional Expressions for Aggregation the caching mechanism only takes into account the primary and secondary rules when creating the session CRC. This means that if the number of sessions that cannot be told apart without use of an Additional Expression is high, the performance of the Aggregation Agent decreases due to cache read/write operations. This is especially true if the Max Cached Sessions property is low compared to the number of sessions. For this reason it is recommended that Max Cached Sessions is set to a high value when using Additional Expressions.
Create Session on Failure	Select this check box to create a new session if no matching session is found. If the check box is not selected, a new session is not created when no matching session is found. Note! If you provide a primary expression, and it evaluates to false, the rule is ignored and no new session is created. If the order of the input UDRs is unimportant, select this check box for all the rules. This means that the session object is created regardless of the order in which the UDRs arrive. However, if the UDRs are expected to arrive in a particular sequence, only select Create Session on Failure for the UDR type/field that is considered to be the master UDR, i e the UDR that marks the beginning of the sequence. In this case, all the slave UDR types/fields are targeted for error handling if they arrive before their master UDR. Note! At least one of all defined rules must have this check box selected. Otherwise, no session is created.
Add Rule	Click this button to add a new rule for the selected UDR type. The rule appears as a new folder to the right of the UDR types in the Aggregation profile configuration. Usually only one rule is required. However, in a situation where a session is based on IP number, stored in either a target or source IP field, two rules are required. The source IP field can be listed in the ID Fields of the first rule and the target IP field listed in the ID Fields of the second rule.
Remove Rule	Click this button to remove the selected rule.

Storage Tab

The Storage tab contains settings that are specific for the selected storage.

File Storage

Setting	Description
Storage Host	You can only select Automatic. When you select Automatic, the EC used by the running workflow is automatically applied. Alternatively, if the Aggregation Session Inspector is used, a storage host is selected automatically. For further information, see Aggregation Inspector(3.0).
Directory	Enter the directory on the Storage Host where you want the aggregation data to be stored. The directory must be a shared file system between all the ECs.
Partial File Count	In this field, you can enter the maximum number of partial files that you want to store. Consider the following: Startup: All the files are read at startup. It takes longer if there are many partial files. Transaction commitment: When the transactions are committed, many small files (large Partial File Count) increase performance. In a batch workflow, use this variable to tune performance. Note! In a real-time workflow, updates to sessions are saved on disk only if the Storage tab is configured with Storage Commit Conditions .
Max Cached Sessions	Enter the maximum number of sessions to keep in the memory cache. This is a performance tuning parameter that determines the memory usage of the Aggregation agent. Set this value to be low enough so that there is still enough space for the cache in memory, but not too low, as this will cause performance to deteriorate.
Enable Separate Storage Per Workflow	This option enables each workflow to have a separate storage that is checked for duplicates. Multiple workflows are allowed to run simultaneously using the same Aggregation profile. However, if this checkbox is selected, a UDR in a workflow will not be checked against UDRs in a different workflow.

Note!

Sometimes, you may notice that file storage takes up more space than expected. This is expected behaviour. Read through this note for an overall understanding of the way file storage in Aggregation works.

When session data is stored, it is appended to the session file. This means that old session data from the session file is still present in the storage and the current version is added to the file. Removal of old data is done only under certain conditions because otherwise, aggregation handling would be too slow. This is why file storage takes up more space than calculated with session number and single session object size.

The session files on the disk grow up to a certain threshold ( 50MB by default) and then a new file is created and used. The old session file will be deleted when no more active sessions are stored in it. The accepted size of a session file can be adjusted by using aggregation.min_session_file_size parameter. For instance, aggregation.min_session_file_size=20000000 will set it to 20MB. This parameter is set with the mzsh topo command on EC, cell or container level.

Old files are removed during the storage commit. Also, since there is a possibility that there will be old session files present because of some long-lived sessions stored there, a defragmentation algorithm is implemented. It runs occasionally and moves those long-lived sessions to new session files so that old session files can be deleted.

This is why aggregation storage takes up a lot of disk space. It is designed to provide higher performance at the expense of higher disk space consumption.

Couchbase Storage

The Aggregation profile configuration dialog - Couchbase Storage

Setting

Description

Profile

Select a Couchbase (3.0). This profile is used to access the primary storage for aggregation sessions.

Mirror Profile

Selecting this Couchbase profile is optional. It is used to access a secondary storage, providing read only access for aggregation sessions. Typically, the Mirror Profile is identically configured to a (primary) Profile, that is used by workflows on a different EC or other system. This is useful to minimize data loss in various failover scenarios. The read only sessions can be retrieved with APL commands. For more information and examples, see Aggregation Functions(3.0) in the APL Reference Guide.

Mirror profile concept

Elasticsearch Storage

Aggregation profile configuration dialog - Elasticsearch Storage

Setting	Description
Elasticsearch	Select an Elasticsearch (3.0). This profile is used to access the storage for aggregation sessions.

Redis Storage

Aggregation profile configuration dialog - Redis Storage

Setting	Description
Profile	Select a Redis profile. This profile is used to access the storage for aggregation sessions.

Advanced Tab

The Advanced tab is available when you have selected Couchbase Storage, Redis Storage or Elasticsearch Storage in the Session tab. It contains properties that can be used for performance tuning. For information about performance tuning, see Aggregation Performance Tuning(3.0).