| Prompt: |
| What is a trigger in Apache Beam? |
| |
| Response: |
| Apache Beam uses triggers to determine when to emit the aggregated results of each [window](https://beam.apache.org/documentation/programming-guide/#windowing), referred to as a pane. |
| |
| Triggers provide two additional capabilities compared to [outputting at the end of a window](https://beam.apache.org/documentation/programming-guide/#default-trigger): |
| - Allowing early results to be output before the end of the window. |
| - Allowing late data to be handled after the end of the window. |
| |
| This feature lets you control the flow of your data and balance between completeness, latency, and cost. |
| |
| You set the triggers for a `PCollection` by setting the `trigger` parameter of the `WindowInto` transform. |
| |
| ```python |
| pcollection | WindowInto( |
| FixedWindows(1 * 60), |
| trigger=AfterProcessingTime(1 * 60), |
| accumulation_mode=AccumulationMode.DISCARDING) |
| ``` |
| |
| When a trigger fires, it emits the current contents of the window as a pane. Because a trigger can fire multiple times, the accumulation mode determines whether the system accumulates the window panes as the trigger fires, or discards them. This behavior is controlled by the [window accumulation mode](https://beam.apache.org/documentation/programming-guide/#window-accumulation-modes) parameter of the `WindowInto` transform. |
| |
| Beam provides several [built-in triggers](https://beam.apache.org/documentation/programming-guide/#triggers) that you can use to determine when to emit the results of your pipeline's windowed computations: |
| - Event time triggers |
| - Processing time triggers |
| - Data-driven triggers |
| - Composite triggers |
| |
| One of the most useful trigger patterns is the [`AfterWatermark`](https://beam.apache.org/documentation/programming-guide/#composite-afterwatermark) trigger, which fires a single time when Apache Beam estimates that all the data has arrived, such as when the watermark passes the end of the window. |