Amazon Web Services - our major backend cloud provider - announcing massive API error rate in their infrastructure

More details and updates can be found at their official status page http://status.aws.amazon.com/. AWS Status page archive is also here.

Thanks to our heavy dependency on Amazon AWS cloud, our Keboola Connection platform suffer by their errors, so please be patient, check AWS status page and keep your fingers crossed! 

For more information, do not hesitate to contact us here in comments or by support@keboola.com.

UPDATE (2015-09-20 7pm CEST): Amazon API is back in business. 

Media coverage - VentureBeat

We have introduced query limits for Redshift clusters to prevent deadlocks and keep the clusters in good shape:

• 5 queries in parallel (further queries will be waiting in a queue for 60 minutes)
• 60 minutes execution time per query

If the query time exceeds 60 minutes, it will be terminated with a user error "Query cancelled on user's request" and/or "An exception occurred while executing".

These limits will take place during the next maintenance window of each cluster (after it reboots). 

If you need to change the limits, contact us at support@keboola.com.

EDIT September 22nd: Due to a high number of requests for a higher number of concurrent queries we've increased the limit from 2 to 5 concurrent queries on each cluster.

A new version of Transformation API was released today with a new feature - we're blocking all SELECT queries. 

These queries do not perform any real operation to your data (if not accompanied with CREATE TABLE or CREATE VIEW) and caused our servers to load the result in memory. If your transformation contains a pure SELECT query, it will fail with a Query not valid error message. 

The fix is easy - delete or comment the SELECT query, it won't effect your transformation.

Thanks for your understanding. 

Date dimensions management in GoodData Writer gets improved UI. In addition you can specify custom GoodData identifiers and templates for your dimensions.

We've launched a new extractor for Google BigQuery.

Do you have massive datasets and you want to store query results against them into KBC, where you can further process it according to yours business needs?

Now we have a solution for you - welcome 'Google BigQuery extractor' into our fast growing family of tools!

We've heard your cries about how difficult it was to re-run failed jobs in the Orchestrator, so we did something about it:

You can now retry any failed job in your orchestration's job queue. On the (failed) job's detail page you'll see a "Job Retry" button in the upper right corner:

Just click on it and press "run" to re-run failed tasks:

If you need to run just a few tasks (failed or not), click on "Choose orchestration tasks to run" to show the task selection list. Select the ones you want by click on grey button in the middle of the window and middle area and activate/de-activate desired tasks.

The run button will create new tasks, so everything will run in the original environment, under the same circumstances and with the same job parameters.  Just take care to note that it is possible that the data underlying the configuration may have been modified by a different process (ie: someone else working with it) in between the last time the job was run and your re-run.

Notifications

If some tasks are prone to fail often (i.e. wrong credentials in client's Google Analytics), you'll want to activate the "Continue on Failure" flag for the "unstable" tasks. If activated, the Orchestrator will not send an error notification when that specific task fails. Instead the Orchestrator will send out a message to our new notifications channel for "Warnings". Go ahead and subscribe to receive emails about all Warnings:

We have launched a new MySQL server for DB Writer. All current credentials (both for reading and writing) are now obsolete, if you have any applications connecting to the MySQL database provided by DB Writer please update the credentials from the writer's page. 

We've made some changes to the file uploads.

Previously, manual file uploads were behaving a little unreliably.  Occasionally, the file appeared to have been uploaded, but in reality it had not been.  This has now  been fixed, so when you see a file listed, you can be sure that it is really there.

Also, all uploaded files are now immediately encrypted for storage.

We've launched a new extractor for Adform. You can start using it right away -- the extractor's interface will guide you through configuration.

With the Adform extractor we are introducing the concept of configuration templates. Templates are predefined common configurations that help you quickly set up the extractor without tons of settings. Templates also reduce duplication of tasks and support knowledge sharing. Soon other extractors will also gain template support, and we are also working on mechanism of publishing templates.

Setup extractor from predefined template:

iTunes Connect helps to manage the content sold on the Apple iTunes, iBooks Store and App Store. If you are working with the content for Apple devices, you have the basic analytics available in iTunes Connection Web Application where you can track the standard information. However, if there is a need for more detailed information and usage in deeper context (e.g. to make a mashup with other data sources), it may be handy to use Keboola Connection (as we needed in DigitalAirways.tv) and that was the main reason for writing of this extension.

iTunes Connect Extractor is based on Apple Autoingestion Tool and written in Node.js and deployed with Docker.

For successful login you need to pass the iTunes Connect username, password and vendor id assigned to your iTunes account. How to pass these credentials and other params is written in Github repository. Apple's official guide is also handy for deeper understanding of all parameters.

The limitation of current version is that there is only possible to extract the Sales data only (with all available fields, described in documentation in Github repository as well) and the configuration have to be passed via JSON. You can download data within specified date period or use the daily increments.The next major version will have functionality for downloading Earnings data and have a proper user interface.

Feel free to use the iTunes Extractor and you find any issue or have any question or suggestion, don't hesitate to contact me at radek@digitalairways.tv.