Odd behavior when logstash finished pipeline

[arisbanach]

I have two pipelines defined in pipelines.yml: one for my main pipeline which imports data from jdbc input, and another for the dead_letter_queue input.

When I run Logstash when it gets to the end of the database, it seems to stop on the last database query and doesn't import anything else. I thought Logstash was supposed to end the pipeline and restart after it was done or something. Is that not the normal behavior?

[guyboertje]

Logstash wants to run forever processing streams of events.
Some inputs set up a server like process that waits (forever) for clients to connect.
Some inputs read from local or networked (S3) folders in a loop looking for new files to read or more content in found files (tail).
Some inputs query message brokers in a loop fetching data from topics.
Some inputs use cron like schedules to periodically read from a source.
Only one input generator will run for a certain time and then shutdown Logstash.

Due to continual streaming, the concept of reaching the end of a pipeline only applies when the generator input is used.

[arisbanach]

So for JDBC input is it best practice to use the schedule parameter and not just let it run?

[guyboertje]

In most cases, yes.

However if you want to use the elasticsearch filter to do enhancement on another pipeline and you choose to load the records from a static reference DB table into ES then you would only run this "loader" pipeline once.