XDB Continuous Update for Reporting

Question

I see in this Sitecore Documentation they mention Continuous Update as a type of processing for reporting. I can't find any documentation on this.

What are the steps and configuration required to set this up?

Answer 1

Continuous Updating is automatically configured. It is the process of xDB which takes interactions that have just ended, out of shared session, into the repository, and then processed and aggregated against.

It starts as soon as Sitecore initializes and runs until the the server is turned off. In most distributed environments, a collection of server roles are utilized:

• Content Delivery servers which handle the tracking of interaction information while the session is active. On Session End data is moved to MongoDB and processing pool entries are added.
• The processing server(s)/role monitor processing events out of both Sitecore and Mongo and perform actions as needed. Processing from Mongo and aggregation to the reporting database.
• The reporting server/role provides the reporting functionality that reads from the reporting database and populates Sitecore Analytics.

Rebuilding of the Reporting Database is the manual intervention that is sometimes needed in rare events where the data between Mongo and the Reporting Databae becomes out of sync. This scenario can come up if MongoDB is manually edited without using the Sitecore API or if the reporting database becomes unusable.

Reporting Service Role Server

For additional information on how to setup a reporting server role, see the following Sitecore Documentation.

https://doc.sitecore.net/sitecore_experience_platform/setting_up_and_maintaining/xdb/configuring_servers/configure_a_reporting_service_server

Processing Role Server

For additional information on how to setup a processing server, see the following Sitecore Documentation.

https://doc.sitecore.net/sitecore_experience_platform/setting_up_and_maintaining/xdb/configuring_servers/configure_a_processing_server

Aggregation Agents

Another configuration that is available is the abilitly to create additional aggregation agents.

When you configure a processing server, to optimize performance, you may need to change the number of aggregation agents or threads that you run. Aggregation agents pick up interactions to be processed by the aggregation pipeline and convert data into a form suitable for use by the reporting database.

You can learn more about Aggregation Agents here.

https://doc.sitecore.net/sitecore_experience_platform/setting_up_and_maintaining/xdb/configuring_servers/configure_agreggation_agents

Commentary

I agree that the documentation link provided reads as though Continous Updating is a separate function of xDB. However, as you read through the doc you realize that Continous Update is really just the standard operation of Sitecore.