Line protocol entries ordering affects tick-script

InfluxDB 1 Kapacitor
1

During testing and learning about influxdb and kapacitor, I discovered that when I send a batch of line-protocol entries through the http API for a sensor, where the lines are not sorted in the order of the timestamp, this affects my tick-script stream tasks quite a lot.

When streaming data from that sensor in the tick-script, it seems like I get the values in the same order (in the stream) as they are listed in the line-protocol batch.

When chaining that node into a window() spanning a 10s period, chained into a httpOut() node, I end up with values spanning more than the 10 second period.

Does this sound like something I should report as a bug? Or is sending line-protocol out-of-order with respect to timestamp (even in a single batch) considered something akin to “undefined behavior”, and everything goes in that case?

versions are:
InfluxDB: 1.6.4
Kapacitor: 1.5.2
Telegraf: 1.12.4

2

I think that sending the line protocol out of order will always result in some strange behavior. One assumption of time series data is that it is in time order.

3

Even when the timeseries (i.e tag-set) is different? Individually the timeseries values are arriving in time-sorted order in the line-protocol batch. Example to illustrate what I mean can be seen below. There is two series here:

  1. sensor,dimension=leakage,location=js,tag=sensor01,unit=raw
  2. sensor,dimension=pressure,location=js,tag=sensor01,unit=bar

And for the for timeseries number 1 here, the tick-script below windows over 15 seconds of data, not the specified 10 seconds.

Tick-script:

dbrp "test_kapacitor"."autogen"

stream
        | from()
                .measurement(sensor)
        |window()
                .period(10s)
                .every(0s)
        |httpOut(dump)

Line-protocol batch:

sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=17 0
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=20 1000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 2000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 3000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 4000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 5000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 6000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 7000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 8000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 9000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 10000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 11000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 12000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 13000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 14000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=bar,dimension=pressure,location=js value=15 15000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1700 0
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=2000 1000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 2000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 3000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 4000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 5000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 6000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 7000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 8000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 9000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 10000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 11000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 12000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 13000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 14000000000
sensor,tag=sensor01,unit=raw,dimension=leakage,location=js value=1500 15000000000

Results in following dumped output:

{
  "series": [
    {
      "name": "sensor",
      "columns": [
        "time",
        "dimension",
        "location",
        "tag",
        "unit",
        "value"
      ],
      "values": [
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:06Z",
          "pressure",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "bar",
          15
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:07Z",
          "pressure",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "bar",
          15
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:08Z",
          "pressure",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "bar",
          15
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:09Z",
          "pressure",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "bar",
          15
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:10Z",
          "pressure",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "bar",
          15
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:11Z",
          "pressure",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "bar",
          15
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:12Z",
          "pressure",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "bar",
          15
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:13Z",
          "pressure",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "bar",
          15
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:14Z",
          "pressure",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "bar",
          15
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:15Z",
          "pressure",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "bar",
          15
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:00Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1700
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:01Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          2000
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:02Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:03Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:04Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:05Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:06Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:07Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:08Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:09Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:10Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:11Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:12Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:13Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:14Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ],
        [
          "1970-01-01T00:00:15Z",
          "leakage",
          "js",
          "sensor01",
          "raw",
          1500
        ]
      ]
    }
  ]
}