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Novelty Setup

Prerequisites

Novelty requires a valid license key to run. To obtain a license key:

Warning

Novelty authenticates against thatDot servers with your license key, meaning Novelty requires an open internet connection to authenticate and start. See License Management for network requirements and troubleshooting.

Getting Started with Novelty

Getting started is easy:

  1. Download and unpack the software - this is an archive (.tar.gz or .zip) holding the Java JAR file novelty.jar and its lib/ directory. If you would prefer a Docker Container, please contact the thatDot Support team (support@thatdot.com).
  2. Create a configuration file (.conf extension) containing the license key and place it in the unpacked directory, next to novelty.jar. This is just a plain text file.
  3. Start your instance of Novelty

Download the Software

After obtaining a license, thatDot will provide you with a secure download link for the Novelty distribution, novelty-1.2.0.tar.gz or novelty-1.2.0.zip. Download it to your local machine or server and unpack it:

tar -xzf novelty-1.2.0.tar.gz
cd novelty-1.2.0

The directory holds novelty.jar, a lib/ directory with every library it depends on, a LICENSE and a README. novelty.jar loads its libraries from lib/ through its manifest: keep the two together and run it from this directory. Launched without lib/ beside it, novelty.jar prints lib/ not found beside novelty.jar; unpack the full distribution and exits.

Create the Configuration File for Novelty

Create a configuration file containing your license key. This file has a .conf extension and should be placed in the unpacked directory, next to novelty.jar.

thatdot {
  novelty {
    license-key = "YOUR_LICENSE_KEY"
  }
}

Start Instance of Novelty

From the unpacked directory, start Novelty with your configuration file using the following command (in this example, the file is called novelty.conf):

java -jar -Dconfig.file=novelty.conf novelty.jar

You can also choose to configure your instance on the command line when launching an instance instead of using a configuration file:

java -jar -Dthatdot.novelty.license-key=YOUR_LICENSE_KEY novelty.jar

Configuring Proxy Settings for Novelty

When deploying Novelty in a network environment that requires proxy traversal, you can configure the application to route license server traffic through a proxy server.

Add proxy settings directly to your configuration file:

thatdot {
  novelty {
    license-key = "YOUR_LICENSE_KEY"
    license-server-proxy-host = "proxy.corp.example.com"
    license-server-proxy-port = 8080
  }
}

Both license-server-proxy-host and license-server-proxy-port must be set for the proxy to activate. See License Management for details.

Note

JVM-level proxy system properties (-Dhttps.proxyHost, etc.) do not apply to license server traffic. You must use the application-level configuration above.

Configuring Novelty transformation cache

Novelty transformations persist a cache to help speed up and optimize their runtime. On Linux machines, this defaults to the $USER home directory. If your deployment of Novelty restricts write access to the default cache location, you can provide on Linux machines, the XDG_CACHE_HOME environment variable, and provide a writable location, like somewhere in the /tmp directory for instance.

If running a .jar file, here is how you can use that environment variable in a script:

export XDG_CACHE_HOME="/tmp/transformation-cache"
java -jar novelty.jar

Here's a snippet of the env section of a Kubernetes manifest if you are using it to orchestrate Novelty, and an example of setting that cache path environment variable:

env:
- name: XDG_CACHE_HOME
  value: "/tmp/transformation-cache"

Key Resources to Help Guide You

Once you have the software downloaded and the initial configuration file created you are ready to go.

These materials will help you navigate setting up pipelines, querying real-time data, and detecting anomalies.