With the two.1 launch, Apache Flink additionally now helps Course of Desk Capabilities (PTFs), essentially the most highly effective sort of perform for Flink SQL and Desk API, the PMC mentioned. Conceptually, a PTF is a superset of all different user-defined capabilities, mapping zero, one, or a number of tables to zero, one, or a number of rows. This allows implementing user-defined operators that may be as feature-rich as built-in operations, the PMC mentioned. PTFs have entry to Flink’s managed state, event-time, desk change logs, and timer providers.
Apache Flink 2.1 additionally provides VARIANT as an information kind for semi-structured information resembling JSON. This new kind helps storing any semi-structured information together with ARRAY, MAP (with STRING keys), and scalar varieties whereas preserving subject kind info in a JSON-like construction. In contrast to the ROW and STRUCTURED varieties, VARIANT gives superior flexibility for dealing with deeply nested and evolving schemas. Customers can use PARSE_JSON or TRY_PARSE_JSON to transform JSON-formatted VARCHAR information to VARIANT.
Additionally in Apache Flink 2.1: