US Patent 9298788 Checkpointing in distributed streaming platform for real-time applications

Software for a distributed streaming platform receives a data stream for an application running on a distributed streaming platform over a networked cluster of servers. The software converts the data into a plurality of data tuples structured according to a schema. And the software repeatedly emits a specified number of the data tuples as a streaming window, which is separated from other streaming windows by a leading control tuple associated with an ordinal identifier for the streaming window and by a trailing control tuple associated with the same ordinal identifier. Then the software emits a checkpointing tuple following the trailing control tuple after a specified number of streaming windows. The checkpointing tuple causes checkpointing of an instance of an operator for the application when the checkpointing tuple is received by the instance.