[ANNOUNCE] Weekly Community Update 2020/29-30

[Konstantin Knauf-4]

Dear community,

happy to share an update for the last two weeks with the release of Apache
Flink 1.11.1, planning for Flink 1.12, a proposal for better
interoperability with Microsoft Azure services, a few blog posts and more.

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

* [releases] Flink 1.11.1 was released as a quick follow up to the Flink
1.11.0 release mostly fixing some critical issues in the Table API/SQL
ecosystem. [1]

* [releases] Robert started a thread to collect the different
topics/features that are planned for Flink 1.12. Robert & Dian will be our
release managers for this one. They propose a feature freeze around the end
of September. [2]

* [connectors] Israel Ekpo started a thread to discuss the contribution of
multiple connectors for Microsoft Azure services including Data Lake Store
Gen 2 (Filesystem), Azure Cosmos DB  (DataStream) and Azure Event Hub
(DataStream). [3]

* [sql] Seth has started a small discussion on how to handle timestamps if
a "datagen" table is created based on an existing table using the LIKE
clause. [4]

* [connectors] Benchao raised the point that the semantic of
InputFormat#nextRecord returning null is inconsistent throughout the code
case and would like to align these. No feedback so far. [5]

* [development process] Andrey reminds everyone to assign the "starter"
label to Jira issues, which are a good pick for new contributors to Apache
Flink. [6]

[1]
http://apache-flink-mailing-list-archive.1008284.n3.nabble.com/ANNOUNCE-Apache-Flink-1-11-1-released-tp43335.html
[2]
http://apache-flink-mailing-list-archive.1008284.n3.nabble.com/DISCUSS-Planning-Flink-1-12-tp43348.html
[3]
http://apache-flink-mailing-list-archive.1008284.n3.nabble.com/DISCUSS-Adding-Azure-Platform-Support-in-DataStream-Table-and-SQL-Connectors-tp43342.html
[4]
http://apache-flink-mailing-list-archive.1008284.n3.nabble.com/Discuss-Handling-of-Timestamp-in-DataGen-table-created-via-LIKE-td43433.html
[5]
http://apache-flink-mailing-list-archive.1008284.n3.nabble.com/DISCUSS-Align-the-semantic-of-returning-null-from-InputFormat-nextRecord-tp43379.html
[6]
http://apache-flink-mailing-list-archive.1008284.n3.nabble.com/REMINDER-Use-starter-labels-for-Jira-issues-where-it-makes-sense-tp43284.html

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

* [FLINK-18705] [FLINK-18700] [1.11.1] For those of you, who are trying out
the new Debezium format, check out the limitations reported in [7,8].
* [FLINK-18656] [1.11.1] The checkpoint start delay metric is always zero
when unaligned checkpoints are used. [9]

[7] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-18705
[8] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-18700
[9] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-18656

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

 * Two new posts on the Flink blog:
    *  Dawid gives an overview over (external) catalogs (e.g.
HiveMetastore, PostgreSQL) in Flink. [10]
    *  Kostas introduces the newly added "Application Mode" and contrasts
it to the two existing modes: "Session Mode" & "Per-Job Mode". [11]

* In this blog post Eric J. Bruno of Dell explains in detail how Apache
Flink can be used for complex event processing and streaming analytics. [12]

* On the 23rd, the Apache Flink meetup group in Seoul hosted a virtual
session with talks by SK Telecom (Korean), HyperConnect (Korean) and
Ververica (English). It is available on Youtube [13].

* We have published the training program for Flink Forward Global taking
place on the 20th & 21st of October. [14] There will be six different
courses offered over these two days:
    * Flink Development (2 days)
    * SQL Development (2 days)
    * Runtime & Operations (1 day)
    * Stateful Functions (1 day)
    * Tuning & Troubleshooting (introduction and advanced, 1 day each).

[10] https://flink.apache.org/2020/07/23/catalogs.html
[11] https://flink.apache.org/news/2020/07/14/application-mode.html
[12]
https://blogs.oracle.com/javamagazine/streaming-analytics-with-java-and-apache-flink
[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWTb5kn4LvE
[14] https://www.flink-forward.org/global-2020/training-program

Cheers,

Konstantin

--

Konstantin Knauf

https://twitter.com/snntrable

https://github.com/knaufk