[ANNOUNCE] Weekly Community Update 2020/28

[Konstantin Knauf-4]

Dear community,

happy to share this week's community update with a discussion on
releasing Flink 1.11.1, FLIPs on a Python DataStream API and improvements
to the "Connect API" of the Table API and a bit more.

Flink Development
==============

* [releases] Flink 1.11.0 was released. Check out the release announcement
for an overview of the features and improvements that come with it. Thanks
to Piotr and Zhijiang for managing the release. [1,2]

* [releases] Jark started a discussion on releasing Flink 1.11.1 following
very soon after Flink 1.11.0 in order to resolve a couple of known issues
mostly in the Table API / SQL ecosystem. [3]

* [python] Shuiqiang Chen has started a discussion on introducing a Python
DataStream API along similar lines as the Python Table API. It is proposed
to initially only support stateless user-defined functions. [4]

* [table api] Jark has started a discussion thread for FLIP-129 to improve
the "Connect API" in the Table API, i.e. the API a user uses to
describe/register a Table with the environment. Many features (e.g.
computed columns) that are already supported in the SQL DDL are not yet
exposed in the Table API yet. [5]

[1] https://flink.apache.org/news/2020/07/06/release-1.11.0.html
[2]
http://apache-flink-mailing-list-archive.1008284.n3.nabble.com/ANNOUNCE-Apache-Flink-1-11-0-released-tp43023.html
[3]
http://apache-flink-mailing-list-archive.1008284.n3.nabble.com/DISCUSS-Releasing-Flink-1-11-1-soon-tp43065.html

[4]
http://apache-flink-mailing-list-archive.1008284.n3.nabble.com/DISCUSS-FLIP-130-Support-for-Python-DataStream-API-Stateless-Part-tp43035.html
[5]
http://apache-flink-mailing-list-archive.1008284.n3.nabble.com/DISCUSS-FLIP-129-Refactor-Descriptor-API-to-register-connector-in-Table-API-tp42995.html

Notable Bugs
==========

Quite a few bugs reported for Flink 1.11.0. See also the discussion on a
quick patch release.

* [FLINK-18419] [1.11.0] You can not create a catalog from a user JAR, e.g.
a JAR passed via the sql-client CLI. Fixed for 1.11.1. [6]

* [FLINK-18583] [1.11.0] The _id field is incorrectly set to the index in
the ElasticSearch table sink. Trivial fix targeted for 1.11.1. [7]

* [FLINK-18583] [1.11.1] The InfluxDB metrics reporter does not work as a
plugin. Trivial fix targeted for 1.11.1. [8]

* [FLINK-18434 [1.10.0] You can not select fields when using the JDBC
catalog. Fixed for 1.11.1. [9]

* [FLINK-18461] [1.11.0] It is currently not possible to write a changelog
stream directly into an upsert sink (e.g. Elastic or JDBC). Fixed for
1.11.1. [10]

[6] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-18419
[7] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-18583
[8] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-18573
[9] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-18434
[10] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-18461

Events, Blog Posts, Misc
===================

* Piotr has joined the Apache Flink PMC. Congratulations! [10]

* My colleague Alexander Fedulov has started an introductory video series
on Apache Flink and stream processing on Youtube. [11,12]

[10]
http://apache-flink-mailing-list-archive.1008284.n3.nabble.com/ANNOUNCE-New-PMC-member-Piotr-Nowojski-tp42966p43022.html
[11]
https://www.ververica.com/blog/presenting-our-streaming-concepts-introduction-to-flink-video-series
[12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU1r7uEAO7o

Cheers,

Konstantin

--

Konstantin Knauf

https://twitter.com/snntrable

https://github.com/knaufk