IoT Core Rule SQL - Access 'Thing' attribute

Question

Hi,

I'd like to enrich messages received by an IoT Core rule with the value of an attribute assigned to the 'Thing' representation of my device, but the only way to do this seems to be to use the `aws_lambda` SQL function as described here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/developerguide/iot-sql-functions.html#iot-func-aws-lambda, which seems a rather awkward way of accessing information already stored and managed inside of IoT Core.

Is there a better way of accessing 'Thing' attributes within an IoT Core rule SQL statement?

Many thanks.

Accepted Answer

At this time, there's no handy SQL function to retrieve Thing attributes.

If you use a Lambda to call [DescribeThing](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/apireference/API_DescribeThing.html), please be aware also of the [service limits](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/iot_device_management.html#dm-api-limits) that you may hit if processing a lot of messages. The DescribeThing limit is adjustable. However, if you have very heavy load, it may be better to store the attribute information somewhere else (in a shadow, DynamoDB, etc).

IoT Core Rule SQL - Access 'Thing' attribute

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