Your Guide to the Apache Flink® Table API: An In-Depth Exploration

The Apache Flink Table API is a unified relational interface for both stream and batch processing, offering a higher-level abstraction compared to the DataStream API. It supports various operations such as filtering, joining, aggregating data, set operations, windowing capabilities, and user-defined functions. The Table API integrates seamlessly with Flink SQL and the DataStream API, allowing users to leverage the strengths of each API as needed. Confluent's fully managed service supports Flink SQL and the Table API, while its on-premises offering supports all Flink APIs. The Table API is particularly useful for serverless deployments on Confluent Cloud, providing a cloud-native experience that focuses solely on business logic while managing the underlying infrastructure automatically.