Timing is Everything: Understanding Event-Time Processing in Flink SQL

In the stream processing context, event-time processing means the events are processed based on when the events occurred, rather than when the events are observed (processing-time) in the system. Apache Flink has a powerful framework for event-time processing, which plays a pivotal role in ensuring temporal order and result accuracy.

In this talk, we will introduce Flink event-time semantics and demonstrate how watermarks as a means of handling late-arriving events are generated, propagated, and triggered using Flink SQL. We will explore operators such as window and join that are often used with event time processing, and how different configurations can impact the processing speed, cost and correctness.

Join us for this exploration where event-time theory meets practical SQL implementation, providing you with the tools to make informed decisions for making optimal trade-offs.