Toolkits

A toolkit is a collection of artifacts that are organized into a package. A toolkit includes one or more namespaces, which contain the operators, functions, and types that are packaged as part of the toolkit, all of which can then be reused in other applications.

Toolkits can be categorized into the following types:

Toolkits that are developed by IBM®

Standard toolkit

The SPL standard toolkit is included with IBM Streams. It contains over thirty operators, functions, types, and other artifacts that are available by default to develop stream processing applications.

You can find samples for the standard operators in the following locations:

Here are some standard operators that you might use in your application.

Aggregate: The Aggregate operator is used to compute user-specified aggregations over tuples that are gathered in a window.
Beacon: The Beacon operator is a utility source that generates tuples dynamically.
FileSink: The FileSink operator writes tuples to a file.
FileSource: The FileSource operator reads data from a file and produces tuples as a result.
Filter: The Filter operator removes tuples from a stream by passing along only those tuples that satisfy a user-specified condition.
Join: The Join operator is used to correlate tuples from two streams that are based on user-specified match predicates and window configurations.
Split: The Split operator is used to split a stream into one or more output streams, which are based on a user-specified split condition.
Throttle: The Throttle operator is used to pace a stream to make it flow at a specified rate.

Specialized toolkit

Specialized toolkits are sets of artifacts that are developed for specific business environments and activities. Toolkits are available for many types of streams. Here are some commonly used toolkits.

Datetime Toolkit
Distributed Process Store Toolkit
Text Toolkit
TimeSeries Toolkit

For a full list of toolkits, see SPL standard and specialized toolkits.

Specialized toolkits have certain requirements and restrictions if you use Streams in an OpenShift or Kubernetes environment. Review Specialized toolkits before you develop applications with specialized toolkits to be deployed in these environments.

Custom toolkits

When you create a streams processing application, you specify a name for a toolkit that is created for that application. If you create artifacts such as operators and functions, those artifacts are saved to the new toolkit directory.

Alternatively, you can create toolkits outside the context of creating applications by developing all the necessary artifacts, organizing them into namespace directories, and running the spl-make-toolkit program to index the toolkit.

Toolkits can also be created by third-party developers and integrated into your application.