Ingest from query (.set, .append, .set-or-append, .set-or-replace)

These commands execute a query or a management command and ingest the results of the query into a table. The difference between these commands is how they treat existing or nonexistent tables and data.

To cancel an ingest from query command, see cancel operation.

Permissions

To perform different actions on a table, specific permissions are required:

• To add rows to an existing table using the .append command, you need a minimum of Table Ingestor permissions.
• To create a new table using the various .set commands, you need a minimum of Database User permissions.
• To replace rows in an existing table using the .set-or-replace command, you need a minimum of Table Admin permissions.

For more information on permissions, see Kusto role-based access control.

Syntax

(.set | .append | .set-or-append | .set-or-replace) [async] tableName [with (propertyName = propertyValue [, ...])] <| queryOrCommand

Learn more about syntax conventions.

Parameters

Supported ingestion properties

Schema considerations

• .set-or-replace preserves the schema unless one of extend_schema or recreate_schema ingestion properties is set to true.
• .set-or-append and .append commands preserve the schema unless the extend_schema ingestion property is set to true.
• Matching the result set schema to that of the target table is based on the column types. There's no matching of column names. Make sure that the query result schema columns are in the same order as the table, else data will be ingested into the wrong columns.

Performance tips

• Data ingestion is a resource-intensive operation that might affect concurrent activities on the cluster, including running queries. Avoid running too many ingestion commands at the same time.
• Limit the data for ingestion to less than 1 GB per ingestion operation. If necessary, use multiple ingestion commands.
• Set the distributed flag to true if the amount of data being produced by the query is large, exceeds 1 GB, and doesn't require serialization. Then, multiple nodes can produce output in parallel. Don't use this flag when query results are small, since it might needlessly generate many small data shards.

Character limitation

The command will fail if the query generates an entity name with the $ character. The entity names must comply with the naming rules, so the $ character must be removed for the ingest command to succeed.

For example, in the following query, the search operator generates a column $table. To store the query results, use project-rename to rename the column.

.set Texas <| search State has 'Texas' | project-rename tableName=$table

Examples

Create a new table called RecentErrors in the database that has the same schema as LogsTable and holds all the error records of the last hour.

.set RecentErrors <|
   LogsTable
   | where Level == "Error" and Timestamp > now() - time(1h)

Create a new table called "OldExtents" in the database that has a single column, "ExtentId", and holds the extent IDs of all extents in the database that has been created more than 30 days earlier. The database has an existing table named "MyExtents". Since the dataset is expected to be bigger than 1 GB (more than ~1 million rows) use the distributed flag

.set async OldExtents with(distributed=true) <|
   MyExtents 
   | where CreatedOn < now() - time(30d)
   | project ExtentId

Append data to an existing table called "OldExtents" in the current database that has a single column, "ExtentId", and holds the extent IDs of all extents in the database that have been created more than 30 days earlier. Mark the new extent with tags tagA and tagB, based on an existing table named "MyExtents".

.append OldExtents with(tags='["TagA","TagB"]') <| 
   MyExtents 
   | where CreatedOn < now() - time(30d) 
   | project ExtentId

Append data to the "OldExtents" table in the current database, or create the table if it doesn't already exist. Tag the new extent with ingest-by:myTag. Do so only if the table doesn't already contain an extent tagged with ingest-by:myTag, based on an existing table named "MyExtents".

.set-or-append async OldExtents with(tags='["ingest-by:myTag"]', ingestIfNotExists='["myTag"]') <|
   MyExtents
   | where CreatedOn < now() - time(30d)
   | project ExtentId

Replace the data in the "OldExtents" table in the current database, or create the table if it doesn't already exist. Tag the new extent with ingest-by:myTag.

.set-or-replace async OldExtents with(tags='["ingest-by:myTag"]', ingestIfNotExists='["myTag"]') <| 
   MyExtents 
   | where CreatedOn < now() - time(30d) 
   | project ExtentId

Append data to the "OldExtents" table in the current database, while setting the created extent(s) creation time to a specific datetime in the past.

.append async OldExtents with(creationTime='2017-02-13T11:09:36.7992775Z') <| 
   MyExtents 
   | where CreatedOn < now() - time(30d) 
   | project ExtentId     

Return output

Returns information on the extents created because of the .set or .append command.

Example output