[Splunk App for CEF] cefout does not forward data with stats command

[sylim_splunk]

We have a CEF output that isn't sending events via the cefout command. We can take the scheduled search and just remove the end with the |cefout and CEF events are generated.

<Datamodel search>
| stats ...
|cefout ...

For some unknown reason they don't get sent when the cefout command is included.

If we use only the first query before stats command, it works and sends events with the |cefout. Adding in the | stats and subsequent lines causes it to not send events.

[sylim_splunk · Accepted solution]

The behavior is expected and stats before cefout is not supported. The cefout command is supposed to work on the indexer layer , which is explained in the doc,  https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/CEFapp/2.3.0/DeployCEFapp/Howtheappworks

 The reason is because the stats command is supposed to run on SH after prestats on indexers but cefout has to run on indexers -  putting stats before cefout causes the search results to pass back to the SH and never come back to indexers. When the search processing moves to the search head, it cannot move back to the indexer.