Weeks in review -- February 8, 2019

Component Updates

  • Python Transformations - now uses the same Python version 3.7.2 as in the transformation sandbox.
  • R transformations have a new backend (v 3.5.2), and we added docs about how to do opt-in in the new version.
  • Storage Writer - now supports the `recreate` mode that will drop and create the target table.
  • Processor Decompress - supports graceful decompression, will skip the file that failed to decompress.
  • Mysql/Mssql/ extractors - allow any numeric or datetime type for incremental fetching.
  • PostgreSQL -  has automatic increment fetching. UI has to be migrated to the new version (by the green button in the config overview).
  • Generic Extractor now supports usage of deeply nested functions.
  • Zendesk Extractor - fixed extracting of custom ticket values fields, existing configurations need to be resaved (switch to template->scroll to the bottom-> select a template again and save).
  • New component for Mailgun (sending emails).


UI Updates

  • Generic Snowflake sandbox - now uses CLONE TABLE load type. It's way faster and it only loads complete tables (no rows sampling).
  • You can choose a backend version of R/Python transformations.
  • Snowflake writer - adding a new table now autoloads column datatypes if present (usual for tables originated from db extractors).
  • Transformations Output  - shows warning when there are 2 output mappings with the same destination table within one phase.
  • PostgreSQL Extractor - query editor now supports PostreSQL specific syntax.


Storage and Project Management Updates

  • All newly created tables in Storage have 16MB cell size instead of 1MB.
  • Limit 110 columns in data preview were removed, contents of wider tables are displayed normally.
  • Organization invitations are now working similarly to project invitations - an invited user has to accept the invitation.



Speeding up transformation outputs in your projects

We're working hard every day to make Keboola Connection faster and minimize the time you spend waiting for your results. This effort includes a wide variety of components of the platform architecture. Some of the changes are straightforward and transparent to the end users, but others are unexpectedly complicated. 

This is the case of transformations. We rolled out an update earlier this year and were forced to immediately rollback to the previous version as it broke the data flow in a few projects. This time, we're more prepared. We have identified the source of the incompatibility, and we'll be rolling out the update silently, only for those projects that will not be adversely affected. The projects that would be affected will not be updated. Instead, they will be notified to take steps to fix the incompatibilities. Then they'll become eligible for the update as well. 

Parallel output processing

In the original system, when all transformations in a phase are executed, the output processing starts. It takes all the transformations sequentially and processes the outputs one by one. The order of the executions is not defined, but it is predictable and, most importantly, it doesn't change between runs. Some projects rely on a specific order of output processing to achieve certain goals.

To speed up the output, we have decided to queue all outputs at once and let Storage handle all jobs as fast as possible. But, as you already may have noticed, this mean the transformations can run in any order or even in parallel. This may affect the result of the output if you relied on a particular order.

Updating the project

The project overview and all affected transformations will notify you about multiple outputs being written to the same table in Storage. You will be easily navigated to the places that need to be fixed. Please contact our support if you need any help doing that. 

Once you have fixed all instances where multiple outputs are written to the same table in your project, you can immediately contact us using the support button. We will turn on the update in your project. Or, wait until we update your project automatically (we're watching all projects regularly).



KBC is not accessible in all regions

[2019-01-22 1:21 UTC]

Snowflake just announced that disabling OCSP check is able circumvent the error. KBC is fully working, you shouldn't have any issue for now!


[2019-01-22 00:51 UTC]

We were removing all OCSP validation and KBC platform is working OK in both (US/EU) regions for now

At this time, we have no more updates from Snowflake support team yet. You shouldn't have any issue with Keboola Connection. In case of any hiccups, please open ticket directly from your KBC project. Once we have RCA report from Snowflake, this post will be updated.

We're very sorry for this inconvenience and thank you so much for your patience with us and Snowflake engineers.


[2019-01-22 00:34 UTC]

SQL Sandboxes are fully working. Take care that all existing credentials were discarded - use new combination of username and password.


[2019-01-22 00:16 UTC]

Just a few components are still having an issue. 

To make up for this outage we're going to add additional resources and run your jobs in Keboola Connection for next few hours on Warp Drive.


[2019-01-22 00:08 UTC]

Almost everything is working now. Last issues are in Transformation Sandboxes.


[2019-01-22 00:02 UTC]

We're very close to fully working platform. Bear with us! 


[2019-01-21 23:50 UTC]

Component jobs are still serving errors from Snowflake DWH. We're disabling OCSP checks on other places in our infrastructure.

 

[2019-01-21 23:37 UTC]

Snowflake just confirmed its SSL validation issue in their ODBC driver (https://community.snowflake.com/s/group/0F90Z000000U8d9/alerts-awsus-west).


[2019-01-21 23:35 UTC]

US region is working.


[2019-01-21 23:34 UTC]

EU region is working.


[2019-01-21 23:32 UTC]

We're building app version with temporarily modified OSCP checks.


[2019-01-21 23:17 UTC]

This issue seem to be connected with OCSP cert validation on Snowflake side. We're still working on it.


[2019-01-21 22:50 UTC]

Starting 2019-01-21 22:33 UTC, all customers are seeing error messages throughout their account. We’re aware of the issue and are working on it urgently.

We’re really sorry to be holding you up today! Please know our engineering and operations teams are working hard to get everything up and running and we will update you right here in 30 minutes with the latest information.

December Failed Jobs Postmortem

In December 2018 we had two incidents (2018-12-14 and 2018-12-19) which resulted in a number of failed jobs. The first one caused 0.8% of jobs to fail (in a 24h window) and the second one caused 1.2% of jobs to fail (in a 24h window). 

Both incidents were caused by unavailability of the Docker container registry (Amazon ECR). In the first incident we were receiving exceeded quota errors and we initially thought that these were related to higher infrastructure load. A thorough investigation showed that we were nowhere near the limits and now we finally got a confirmation from Amazon that this was an error on their side. The second incident was caused by complete unavailability of the ECR for approximately 30 minutes.

Technical background:

The Docker container registry is used to store the executable code for each component running in Keboola Connection. It is accessed on every job run to make sure that a job is run with the most recent version of the component code. During 2017 we moved most of our components to the Amazon ECR which proved to be very reliable. The outage mentioned above is the first one since 2016 when we began using it. 

Most of the Keboola's infrastructure is duplicated with automatic fail-safe mechanisms in place. That means that minor outages in the underlying services are not noticeable by the end-users. Duplicating the Docker container registry, however, is not an easy task because Docker is not really ready for that yet. So this remains a single point of failure.

Measures already taken and yet to be taken:

  • We have immediately implemented a retry mechanism in our code which will handle short outages, the retry mechanism will also be further improved.
  • We have already started (prior to the incident) reworking the component code validation tooling so that the number of queries to the ECR is reduced by several orders. This will help reduce the impact, should a similar incident happen again.
  • We'll use a dedicated ECR for each Keboola Connection region which will reduce the affected scope for any similar incident in the future. 


Job errors

Between 2019-01-15 15:58 and 2019-01-16 8:25 UTC we had a bug in our platform which caused some jobs to fail with user error "Some columns are missing in the csv file". The bug affected jobs where data was imported to Storage with non-default delimiter (default is colon). It is also possible that in some cases an extra column was created in the table. The column contains no data. This column needs to be deleted manually otherwise any subsequent jobs will fail.

We do sincerely apologize for the trouble this may have caused to you. Don't hesitate to contact our support for help.


Snowflake issues

Some Snowflake transformations fail with such error: odbc_exec(): SQL error: [unixODBC]SQL execution internal error: Processing aborted due to error 300010:1087106694; incident 5370475., SQL state XX000 in SQLExecDirect. It seems that there is some issue in the Snowflake warehouse. We will keep you informed.

Update 19:30 UTC: The problem should be fixed in the US region. (Last occurrence in our infrastructure is from 12:08 UTC.) It seems there was an issue specific to some CREATE TABLE AS SELECT and INSERTs that use window functions.

New Year's Deprecations

It is always a good idea to start the New Year with something new. We decided to do it differently and start this New Year with deprecations. Cleaning up deprecated or obsolete parts of our system also has a place in our TODO lists.

So we'd like to announce the following deprecations of a few components in the US region, MySQL transformations and storage bucket/tables attributes. 

Components

Google Drive Writer (wr-google-drive)

  • We announced the new version of Google Drive Writer on June 28th, 2017.
  • This is the last call, the old component will be shut down by the end of this month - January 31st, 2019.

Lucky Guess (rt-lucky-guess)

  • Enhanced Analysis for Redshift backend is no longer available.
  • This component will be shut down on January 31st, 2019.

SalesForce Extractor (ex-salesforce)

  • This component is already deprecated.
  • This component will be shutdown on January 31st, 2019.

YouTube Extractor (ex-youtube)

  • This component is already deprecated and no jobs were run in last months.
  • This component will be shut down immediately.

Zendesk Extractor (ex-zendesk)

  • A new version of the Zendesk extractor was announced on July 27, 2016.
  • Like the YouTube Extractor, no jobs were run in last months and we will shut it down immediately.

Restbox (restbox)

  • This component was deprecated on July 16, 2018 with multiple replacements.
  • Same here, no jobs were run in last months and it will be shut down immediately.

MySQL Transformations

MySQL Transformations were deprecated on November 13, 2017. As we promised, MySQL Transformations were supported in 2018 and will be finally shut down on January 31st, 2019.

Deprecated Bucket and Table attributes

We are deprecating Bucket and Table attributes. These attributes were used as configuration storage for legacy components. If you need to store additional information with buckets or tables, please use the Metadata API.


Security enhancements to GoodData projects access

Direct single sign-on access to GoodData projects from Keboola Connection has been improved and its security enhanced. Due to it, access has been disabled to all existing users and you have to enable it again in Writer's configuration. 

Also, you are no longer able to switch between projects, once you are in GoodData. You have to return back to Connection and access the other project from there. Although it can be a little less comfortable, it brings improved security and we believe it is a better solution for you.

Facebook Ads Extractor Failed Jobs

Between 1:00 - 8:20 CET January 4th, 2019 some Facebook extractor jobs failed after yesterday update of the extractor. We rolled back to the previous working version and continue investigating the issue. Please revise your facebook ads extractor latest jobs and restart if needed. 

We are sorry for this inconvenience.

Update 12:50 CET

The issue has been resolved. The problem was in configurations that used own its authorization token, i.e., not authorized under Keboola Facebook App.

Weeks in review -- January 2, 2019

New components and component updates

  • New FTP extractor is now in beta. It is packed with the same features as AWS S3 extractor and it is extensible with processors. We aim to gradually replace the current FTP extractor which is developed by 3rd party.
  • New fit-into-storage processor that allows to import non-csv files (TXT, JSON) into storage by wrapping them into CSV tables.
  • AWS S3 Extractor fixes bug with file matching. When the Subfolders option was off and Wildcard option was on, the extractor would erroneously download files contained in subfolders exactly matching the key.
  • MongoDB extractor export mode is now set to "raw" by default on new configurations.

Enhancements

Input and output mapping for components is now parallelized. Configurations with large number of tables in input and output mapping (except transformations) should now run considerably faster. This affects both extractors and writers. Most recently updated extractors (e.g. AWS S3, FTP, HTTP, MySQL, MSSQL, Storage) also load tables into storage during the extraction of other tables. Together, these make up to 40% run time reduction for some configurations.

Input mapping load type is now shown in input mapping details:

The Run Orchestration dialog now has the option to select/deselect all tasks:

Developers

The option to have gzipped CSV file on component output mapping (/data/out/tables/) was removed. Only plain CSV files are accepted now. To our best knowledge this was never used.