Koji Kawamura created NIFI-5406:
-----------------------------------

             Summary: Add processors to list new or updated files by tracking 
listed entities
                 Key: NIFI-5406
                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NIFI-5406
             Project: Apache NiFi
          Issue Type: Improvement
          Components: Extensions
            Reporter: Koji Kawamura
            Assignee: Koji Kawamura


Current List processors (ListFile, ListFTP, ListSFTP ... etc) implementation 
relies on file last modified timestamp to pick new or updated files. This 
approach is efficient and lightweight in terms of state management, because it 
only tracks latest modified timestamp and last executed timestamp. However, 
timestamps do not work as expected in some file systems, causing List 
processors missing files periodically. See NIFI-3332 comments for details.

In order to pick every entity that has not seen before or has been updated 
since it had seen last time, we need another set of processors using different 
approach, that is by tracking listed entities:
 * Add new abstract processor AbstractWatchEntries similar to 
AbstractListProcessor but uses different approach
 * Target entities have: name (path), size and last-modified-timestamp
 * Implementation Processors have following properties:
 ** 'Watch Time Window' to limit the maximum time period to hold the already 
listed entries. E.g. if set as '30min', the processor keeps entities listed in 
the last 30 mins.
 ** 'Minimum File Age' to defer listing entities potentially being written
 * Any entity added but not listed ever having last-modified-timestamp older 
than configured 'Watch Time Window' will not be listed. If user needs to pick 
these items, they have to make 'Watch Time Window' longer. It also increases 
the size of data the processor has to persist in the K/V store. Efficiency vs 
reliability trade-off.
 * The already-listed entities are persisted into one of supported K/V store 
through DistributedMapCacheClient service. User can chose what KVS to use from 
HBase, Redis, Couchbase and File (DistributedMapCacheServer with persistence 
file).
 * The reason to use KVS instead of ManagedState is, to avoid hammering 
Zookeeper too much with frequently updating Zk node with large amount of data. 
The number of already-listed entries can be huge depending on use-cases. Also, 
we can compress entities with DistributedMapCacheClient as it supports putting 
byte array, while ManagedState only supports Map<String, String>.
 * On each onTrigger:
 ** Processor performs listing. Listed entries meeting any of the following 
condition will be written to the 'success' output FlowFile:
 *** Not exists in the already-listed entities
 *** Having newer last-modified-timestamp
 *** Having different size
 ** Already listed entries those are old enough compared to 'Watch Time Window' 
are discarded from the already-listed entries.
 * Initial supporting target is Local file system, FTP and SFTP



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