Introducing Apache Flink: 5 Things You Need to Know to Get Started

Apache Flink is one of the most popular stateful stream processing frameworks in the world. For those who haven't had a chance to explore it yet, we'd like to introduce the basics on what you need to know about Apache Flink in order to get started with your first streaming application.

We’ll kick off the session by setting the stage by introducing typical use cases to show what Flink can do. Then, we’ll dive into Flink and its architecture, and how this stream processing framework differs from other solutions available to you, e.g. Apache Spark, Kafka Streams, and ksqlDB among others. We will learn about Flink’s core streaming concepts around time and watermarks, state and state backends, and the different fault tolerance modes it supports. You’ll get an introduction into the different APIs available to you when writing Flink applications, including the most accessible API, Flink SQL. And finally, we’ll conclude with a small project to give you a jumping off point for your first Flink application.

By the end of the session, you’ll understand what Flink is good for, how it differs from other stream processing frameworks, Flink’s core concepts, its APIs, and how to get started.