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what is cosmos db container

by Chadrick Little Published 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago
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An Azure Cosmos DB container is where data is stored. Unlike most relational databases which scale up with larger VM sizes, Azure Cosmos DB scales out. Data is stored on one or more servers, called partitions. To increase throughput or storage, more partitions are added.Sep 20, 2022

Full Answer

How is data stored in Azure Cosmos DB container?

The multi-model operational data in an Azure Cosmos DB container is internally stored in an indexed row-based "transactional store". Row store format is designed to allow fast transactional reads and writes in the order-of-milliseconds response times, and operational queries.

Why does Cosmos DB require a minimum throughput for my container?

As the container grows, Cosmos DB requires a minimum throughput to ensure the database or container has sufficient resource for its operations. The current and minimum throughput of a container or a database can be retrieved from the Azure portal or the SDKs. For more information, see Provision throughput on containers and databases.

What is icosmosdbcontainer in Cosmos DB?

ICosmosDbContainer is just a wrapper interface for Azure Cosmos DB Container. It has a property _container of type Cosmos DB Container. _container is the bread and butter that allows the calling program (API/Function Apps etc.) to interact with Cosmos DB. Step 3 — let’s implement the factory interface.

Does Microsoft use Cosmos DB?

Microsoft utilizes Cosmos DB in many of its own apps, [19] including Microsoft Office, Skype, Active Directory, Xbox, and MSN . In building a more globally-resilient application / system, Cosmos DB combines with other Azure services, such as Azure App Services and Azure Traffic Manager. [20]

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What is Cosmos DB used for?

Azure Cosmos DB is commonly used within web and mobile applications, and is well suited for modeling social interactions, integrating with third-party services, and for building rich personalized experiences. The Cosmos DB SDKs can be used build rich iOS and Android applications using the popular Xamarin framework.

How many containers does a Cosmos DB have?

With standard (manual) provisioned throughput, you can have up to 25 containers with a minimum of 400 RU/s on the database. With autoscale provisioned throughput, you can have up to 25 containers in a database with autoscale minimum 1000 RU/s (scales between 100 - 1000 RU/s).

Is Cosmos DB container a table?

A Cosmos DB Container is not similar to a SQL Server Table. You can import data from multiple tables in a database into a single Cosmos DB container.

How do you make a container in Cosmos DB?

Create a container using Azure portalSign in to the Azure portal.Create a new Azure Cosmos account, or select an existing account.Open the Data Explorer pane, and select New Container. Next, provide the following details: Indicate whether you are creating a new database or using an existing one. Enter a Container Id.

Is Cosmos DB PaaS or SAAS?

Cosmos Db is a PaaS offering, where it gets additional features ahead, meaning it will improve continuously with additional applications and features. Pricing is based on the storage consumed and the data throughput: Data throughput is measured in request units per second.

How do you deploy Azure Cosmos DB?

Click the three-line menu icon in the top left corner of the page, and click Azure Cosmos DB. Click Add. Select the resource group the lab created for you. Provide an account name (must be unique)....Enter the following values:Database id: Players.Container id: Profiles.Partition key: /team.

What type of database is Cosmos DB?

serverless NoSQL databaseAzure Cosmos DB is a fully managed, serverless NoSQL database for high-performance applications of any size or scale.

What kind of DB is cosmos?

NoSQL databaseAzure Cosmos DB is Microsoft's proprietary globally distributed, multi-model database service "for managing data at planet-scale" launched in May 2017. It is schema-agnostic, horizontally scalable, and generally classified as a NoSQL database.

Is Cosmos DB same as MongoDB?

Azure Cosmos DB is comparatively faster than MongoDB in most common use cases, although MongoDB performs better over 1MB payload. MongoDB offers more flexibility in terms of setup. It runs on-prem, any cloud provider (Google Cloud Platform, AWS, Azure and more).

Which container is supported in Azure Cosmos DB?

Azure Cosmos DB containersAzure Cosmos entitySQL APIAzure Cosmos DB API for MongoDBAzure Cosmos containerContainerCollectionSep 20, 2022

How do I add items to Cosmos database?

Add data to your database Next, select Items, and then select New Item. Select Save. Select New Item again, and create and save another document with a unique id , and any other properties and values you want. Your documents can have any structure, because Azure Cosmos DB doesn't impose any schema on your data.

What can be considered as a container while using SQL API?

For SQL API, the resource is called a container. For Cosmos DB's API for MongoDB accounts, a container maps to a Collection. For Cassandra and Table API accounts, a container maps to a Table. For Gremlin API accounts, a container maps to a Graph.

Which container is supported in Azure Cosmos DB?

An Azure Cosmos DB container is unit of scalability for both provisioned throughput and storage. A container horizontally partitioned based on partition key and then the data can be replicated across different Azure regions....Containers.PropertyPurposeindexingPolicyAbility to change index path / mode / type.8 more rows•Dec 15, 2019

Will cosmos grow in pots?

Container Grown Cosmos Cosmos flowers can be successfully grown in containers. Species plants can grow as much as 6 feet (2 m.) tall, so look for dwarf or compact cultivars for containers. Of the 20 species of annual and perennial cosmos flowers, cultivars of C.

What can be considered as a container while using SQL API in Cosmos DB?

For SQL API, the resource is called a container. For Cosmos DB's API for MongoDB accounts, a container maps to a Collection. For Cassandra and Table API accounts, a container maps to a Table. For Gremlin API accounts, a container maps to a Graph.

What can be considered as system resources in Cosmos DB?

The cost to do a point read, which is fetching a single item by its ID and partition key value, for a 1KB item is 1RU. The cost is based on system resources such as CPU, IOPS, and memory that are required to perform the database operations.

In this article

APPLIES TO: SQL API Cassandra API Gremlin API Table API Azure Cosmos DB API for MongoDB

Guaranteed speed at any scale

Gain unparalleled SLA-backed speed and throughput, fast global access, and instant elasticity.

Simplified application development

Build fast with open source APIs, multiple SDKs, schemaless data and no-ETL analytics over operational data.

Mission-critical ready

Guarantee business continuity, 99.999% availability, and enterprise-level security for every application.

Fully managed and cost-effective

End-to-end database management, with serverless and automatic scaling matching your application and TCO needs

Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB

Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB is a cloud-native hybrid transactional and analytical processing (HTAP) capability that enables near real time analytics over operational data in Azure Cosmos DB. Azure Synapse Link creates a tight seamless integration between Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Synapse Analytics.

Azure Cosmos DB resource model

This article describes Azure Cosmos DB resource model which includes the Azure Cosmos account, database, container, and the items. It also covers the hierarchy of these elements in an Azure Cosmos account.

What is SQL API?

The SQL API lets clients create, update and delete containers and items. Items can be queried with a read-only, JSON -friendly SQL dialect. As Cosmos DB embeds a JavaScript engine, the SQL API also enables:

What is Cosmos DB?

Internally, Cosmos DB stores "items" in "containers", with these two concepts being surfaced differently depending on the API used (these would be "documents" in "collections" when using the MongoDB-compatible API, for example). Containers are grouped in "databases", which are analogous to namespaces above containers. Containers are schema-agnostic, which means that no schema is enforced when adding items.

What are the compatibility APIs for Cosmos?

five different compatibility APIs, exposing endpoints that are partially compatible with the wire protocols of MongoDB, Gremlin, Cassandra, Azure Table Storage, and etcd; these compatibility APIs make it possible for any compatible application to connect to and use Cosmos DB through standard drivers or SDKs, while also benefiting from Cosmos DB's core features like partitioning and global distribution.

What is TTL in Cosmos?

A " Time to Live " (or TTL) can be specified at the container level to let Cosmos DB automatically delete items after a certain amount of time expressed in seconds. This countdown starts after the last update of the item. If needed, the TTL can also be overloaded at the item level.

What is change feed in Cosmos?

Each Cosmos DB container exposes a change feed, which clients can subscribe to in order to get notified of new items being added or updated in the container. As of 7 June 2021, item deletions are currently not exposed by the change feed. Changes are persisted by Cosmos DB, which makes it possible to request changes from any point in time since the creation of the container.

How many consistency levels are there in TLA?

All five consistency levels have been specified and verified using the TLA+ specification language, with the TLA+ model being open-sourced on GitHub.

When did Cosmos DB partition?

Cosmos DB added automatic partitioning capability in 2016 with the introduction of partitioned containers. Behind the scenes, partitioned containers span multiple physical partitions with items distributed by a client-supplied partition key. Cosmos DB automatically decides how many partitions to spread data across depending on the size and throughput needs. When partitions are added or removed, the operation is performed without any downtime so data remains available while it is re-balanced across the new or remaining partitions.

Challenges with large-scale analytics on operational data

The multi-model operational data in an Azure Cosmos DB container is internally stored in an indexed row-based "transactional store". Row store format is designed to allow fast transactional reads and writes in the order-of-milliseconds response times, and operational queries.

Column-oriented analytical store

Azure Cosmos DB analytical store addresses the complexity and latency challenges that occur with the traditional ETL pipelines. Azure Cosmos DB analytical store can automatically sync your operational data into a separate column store.

Features of analytical store

When you enable analytical store on an Azure Cosmos DB container, a new column-store is internally created based on the operational data in your container. This column store is persisted separately from the row-oriented transactional store for that container.

Column store for analytical workloads on operational data

Analytical workloads typically involve aggregations and sequential scans of selected fields. By storing the data in a column-major order, the analytical store allows a group of values for each field to be serialized together. This format reduces the IOPS required to scan or compute statistics over specific fields.

Decoupled performance for analytical workloads

There's no impact on the performance of your transactional workloads due to analytical queries, as the analytical store is separate from the transactional store. Analytical store doesn't need separate request units (RUs) to be allocated.

Auto-Sync

Auto-Sync refers to the fully managed capability of Azure Cosmos DB where the inserts, updates, deletes to operational data are automatically synced from transactional store to analytical store in near real time. Auto-sync latency is usually within 2 minutes.

Scalability & elasticity

By using horizontal partitioning, Azure Cosmos DB transactional store can elastically scale the storage and throughput without any downtime. Horizontal partitioning in the transactional store provides scalability & elasticity in auto-sync to ensure data is synced to the analytical store in near real time.

Fast NoSQL database with open APIs for any scale

Azure Cosmos DB is a fully managed, serverless NoSQL database for high-performance applications of any size or scale.

Automatic and limitless scale

Meet your application needs and deliver high performance—even with unpredictable traffic—with a database that scales elastically, automatically, and instantly.

Serverless database operations

Run workloads with spiky or occasional traffic and pay for only the resources used per database operation, with no minimum charges or capacity planning needed. Serverless is a consumption-based mode that makes it easy and cost-effective to run dev/test workloads and production applications.

Hybrid platform for Apache Cassandra data

Gain scale and superior performance, while maintaining flexibility and control, with a fully managed NoSQL database service trusted by companies like Symantec to run Cassandra workloads.

No-ETL analytics over real-time operational data

Reduce time to insight by running near-real time analytics and AI on the operational data within your Azure Cosmos DB NoSQL database. Azure Synapse Link for Azure Cosmos DB seamlessly integrates with Azure Synapse Analytics without data movement or diminishing the performance of your operational data store.

Pricing that gives you flexibility and control

Find the model that best fits your workload and free options for testing and development. Enjoy virtually unlimited throughput and storage, automatic elastic scalability across regions, and consumption-based serverless options.

Storage and database operations

After you create an Azure Cosmos account under your subscription, you can manage data in your account by creating databases, containers, and items.

Control plane operations

You can provision and manage your Azure Cosmos account using the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, Azure CLI, and Azure Resource Manager templates. The following table lists the limits per subscription, account, and number of operations.

Per-container limits

Depending on which API you use, an Azure Cosmos container can represent either a collection, a table, or graph. Containers support configurations for unique key constraints, stored procedures, triggers, and UDFs, and indexing policy. The following table lists the limits specific to configurations within a container.

Per-item limits

An Azure Cosmos item can represent either a document in a collection, a row in a table, or a node or edge in a graph; depending on which API you use. The following table shows the limits per item in Cosmos DB.

Per-request limits

Azure Cosmos DB supports CRUD and query operations against resources like containers, items, and databases. It also supports transactional batch requests against multiple items with the same partition key in a container.

Metadata request limits

Azure Cosmos DB maintains system metadata for each account. This metadata allows you to enumerate collections, databases, other Azure Cosmos DB resources, and their configurations for free of charge.

Limits for autoscale provisioned throughput

See the Autoscale article and FAQ for more detailed explanation of the throughput and storage limits with autoscale.

What is iCosmosDBContainer?

Step 2 — let’s look at the ICosmosDbContainer returned by GetContainer above. ICosmosDbContainer is just a wrapper interface for Azure Cosmos DB Container. It has a property _container of type Cosmos DB Container. _container is the bread and butter that allows the calling program (API/Function Apps etc.) to interact with Cosmos DB.

What is containerinfo class?

ContainerInfo is just a custom type class we created to track container name and container partition key property.

Why throw an exception instead of handling it?

Throwing an exception here instead of handling it is quite important here, as it allows our factory to serve one single purpose and not get bogged down with business logic on how exceptions should be handled. In fact, different calling programs may choose to handle exceptions in a totally different manner. E.g., an API client may choose to just log the exception while a Console App client may choose to automatically create a non-existing container. If this is of interest to you, I recently published an article on how exceptions can be handled in a centralized approach in Clean Architecture.

Does Cosmos DB have a factory pattern?

Congratulations! We have successfully implemented factory pattern to work with Cosmos DB containers. In our example, we registered a singleton factory instance, which is responsible to take the calling program’s requests for containers and return exactly what the client needs. What does the calling program needs to know? Nothing about how the containers are made! When we need to update the factory, we have one centralized place to update and do not need to update any calling programs like API or Function Apps. Sweet!

What is factory pattern?

What is Factory Pattern? It is a design pattern in OOP that allows us to encapsulate object creation logic and hide its complexity from the calling program, such as API, Function Apps, and even users. This probably sounds very vague. My personal take-away note is that factory pattern allows me to ask the factory:

Is Cosmos client thread safe?

Its recommended to maintain a single instance of Cosmos Client per lifetime of the application which enables efficient connection management and performance”.

Does Cosmos DB take private variables?

Notice it takes many private variables to get connected to Cosmos DB in order to get started.

Request Unit considerations

While you estimate the number of RUs consumed by your workload, consider the following factors:

Request units and multiple regions

If you provision 'R' RUs on a Cosmos container (or database), Cosmos DB ensures that 'R' RUs are available in each region associated with your Cosmos account. You can't selectively assign RUs to a specific region. The RUs provisioned on a Cosmos container (or database) are provisioned in all the regions associated with your Cosmos account.

Next steps

Learn more about how to provision throughput on Azure Cosmos containers and databases.

Time to live for containers and items

The time to live value is set in seconds, and it is interpreted as a delta from the time that an item was last modified. You can set time to live on a container or an item within the container:

Time to Live configurations

If TTL is set to "n" on a container, then the items in that container will expire after n seconds.

Examples

This section shows some examples with different time to live values assigned to container and items:

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Overview

Global distribution

Cosmos DB databases can be configured to be available in any of the Microsoft Azure regions (54 regions as of December 2018), letting application developers place their data closer to where their users are. Each container's data gets transparently replicated across all configured regions. Adding or removing regions is performed without any downtime or impact on performance. By leveraging Cosmos DB's multi-homing API, applications don't have to be updated or redeployed …

Data model

Internally, Cosmos DB stores "items" in "containers", with these two concepts being surfaced differently depending on the API used (these would be "documents" in "collections" when using the MongoDB-compatible API, for example). Containers are grouped in "databases", which are analogous to namespaces above containers. Containers are schema-agnostic, which means that no schema is enforced when adding items.

Multi-model APIs

The internal data model described in the previous section is exposed through:
• a proprietary SQL API
• five different compatibility APIs, exposing endpoints that are partially compatible with the wire protocols of MongoDB, Gremlin, Cassandra, Azure Table Storage, and etcd; these compatibility APIs make it possible for any compatible application to connect to and use Cosmos DB through standard drivers or SDKs, while also benefiting from Cosmos DB's cor…

Partitioning

Cosmos DB added automatic partitioning capability in 2016 with the introduction of partitioned containers. Behind the scenes, partitioned containers span multiple physical partitions with items distributed by a client-supplied partition key. Cosmos DB automatically decides how many partitions to spread data across depending on the size and throughput needs. When partitions are added or removed, the operation is performed without any downtime so data remains available …

Tunable throughput

Developers can specify desired throughput to match the application's expected load. Cosmos DB reserves resources (memory, CPU and IOPS) to guarantee the requested throughput while maintaining request latency below 10ms for both reads and writes at the 99th percentile. Throughput is specified in Request Units (RUs) per second. The cost to read a 1 KB item is 1 Request Unit (or 1 RU). Select by 'id' operations consume lower number of RUs compared to De…

Analytical Store

This feature, announced in May 2020, is a fully isolated column store for enabling large scale analytics against operational data in the Azure Cosmos DB, without any impact to its transactional workloads. This feature addresses the complexity and latency challenges that occur with the traditional ETL pipelines required to have a data repository optimized to execute Online analytical processing by automatically syncing the operational data into a separate column store suitable fo…

Reception

Gartner Research positions Microsoft as the leader in the Magic Quadrant Operational Database Management Systems in 2016 and calls out the unique capabilities of Cosmos DB in their write-up.

1.Azure Cosmos DB resource model | Microsoft Learn

Url:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/account-databases-containers-items

31 hours ago  · An Azure Cosmos DB container is where data is stored. Unlike most relational databases which scale up with larger VM sizes, Azure Cosmos DB scales out. Data is stored …

2.Introduction to Azure Cosmos DB | Microsoft Learn

Url:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/introduction

24 hours ago  · Azure Cosmos DB is a fully managed NoSQL database for modern app development. Single-digit millisecond response times, and automatic and instant scalability, …

3.Videos of What is Cosmos DB Container

Url:/videos/search?q=what+is+cosmos+db+container&qpvt=what+is+cosmos+db+container&FORM=VDRE

11 hours ago  · The multi-model operational data in an Azure Cosmos DB container is internally stored in an indexed row-based "transactional store". Row store format is …

4.Cosmos DB - Wikipedia

Url:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_DB

16 hours ago Azure Cosmos DB is a fully managed, serverless NoSQL database for high-performance applications of any size or scale. Get guaranteed single-digit millisecond performance and …

5.What is Azure Cosmos DB analytical store? | Microsoft …

Url:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/analytical-store-introduction

32 hours ago What is container in Azure Cosmos DB? An Azure Cosmos container is the unit of scalability for both throughput and storage. A container is horizontally partitioned across a set of …

6.Azure Cosmos DB – NoSQL Database | Microsoft Azure

Url:https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/cosmos-db/

14 hours ago  · A Cosmos container (or shared throughput database) using manual throughput must have a minimum throughput of 400 RU/s. As the container grows, Cosmos DB …

7.Azure Cosmos DB service quotas | Microsoft Learn

Url:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/concepts-limits

32 hours ago  · ICosmosDbContainer is just a wrapper interface for Azure Cosmos DB Container. It has a property _container of type Cosmos DB Container. _container is the bread …

8.Best Design Pattern for Azure Cosmos DB Containers

Url:https://medium.com/swlh/best-design-pattern-for-azure-cosmos-db-containers-factory-pattern-addff5628f8a

2 hours ago  · Azure Cosmos DB supports many APIs, such as SQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Gremlin, and Table. Each API has its own set of database operations. These operations range …

9.Request Units as a throughput and performance …

Url:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/request-units

16 hours ago  · APPLIES TO: SQL API. With Time to Live or TTL, Azure Cosmos DB provides the ability to delete items automatically from a container after a certain time period. By …

10.Expire data in Azure Cosmos DB with Time to Live

Url:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/sql/time-to-live

24 hours ago

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