Apache Flink - Table API and SQL

Table API is a relational API with SQL like expression language. This API can do both batch and stream processing. It can be embedded with Java and Scala Dataset and Datastream APIs. You can create tables from existing Datasets and Datastreams or from external data sources. Through this relational API, you can perform operations like join, aggregate, select and filter. Whether the input is batch or stream, the semantics of the query remains the same.

Here is a sample Table API program −

// for batch programs use ExecutionEnvironment instead of StreamExecutionEnvironment
val env = StreamExecutionEnvironment.getExecutionEnvironment

// create a TableEnvironment
val tableEnv = TableEnvironment.getTableEnvironment(env)

// register a Table
tableEnv.registerTable("table1", ...) // or
tableEnv.registerTableSource("table2", ...) // or
tableEnv.registerExternalCatalog("extCat", ...)

// register an output Table
tableEnv.registerTableSink("outputTable", ...);
// create a Table from a Table API query
val tapiResult = tableEnv.scan("table1").select(...)
// Create a Table from a SQL query
val sqlResult = tableEnv.sqlQuery("SELECT ... FROM table2 ...")

// emit a Table API result Table to a TableSink, same for SQL result
tapiResult.insertInto("outputTable")

// execute
env.execute()