Table API and SQL queries have the same semantics regardless whether their input is bounded batch input or unbounded stream input. In many cases, continuous queries on streaming input are capable of computing accurate results that are identical to offline computed results. However, this is not possible in general case because continuous queries have to restrict the size of the state they are maintaining in order to avoid to run out of storage and to be able to process unbounded streaming data over a long period of time. As a result, a continuous query might only be able to provide approximated results depending on the characteristics of the input data and the query itself.
Flink’s Table API and SQL interface provide parameters to tune the accuracy and resource consumption of continuous queries. The parameters are specified via a QueryConfig
object. The QueryConfig
can be obtained from the TableEnvironment
and is passed back when a Table
is translated, i.e., when it is transformed into a DataStream or emitted via a TableSink.
In the following we describe the parameters of the QueryConfig
and how they affect the accuracy and resource consumption of a query.
Many queries aggregate or join records on one or more key attributes. When such a query is executed on a stream, the continuous query needs to collect records or maintain partial results per key. If the key domain of the input stream is evolving, i.e., the active key values are changing over time, the continuous query accumulates more and more state as more and more distinct keys are observed. However, often keys become inactive after some time and their corresponding state becomes stale and useless.
For example the following query computes the number of clicks per session.
The sessionId
attribute is used as a grouping key and the continuous query maintains a count for each sessionId
it observes. The sessionId
attribute is evolving over time and sessionId
values are only active until the session ends, i.e., for a limited period of time. However, the continuous query cannot know about this property of sessionId
and expects that every sessionId
value can occur at any point of time. It maintains a count for each observed sessionId
value. Consequently, the total state size of the query is continuously growing as more and more sessionId
values are observed.
The Idle State Retention Time parameters define for how long the state of a key is retained without being updated before it is removed. For the previous example query, the count of a sessionId
would be removed as soon as it has not been updated for the configured period of time.
By removing the state of a key, the continuous query completely forgets that it has seen this key before. If a record with a key, whose state has been removed before, is processed, the record will be treated as if it was the first record with the respective key. For the example above this means that the count of a sessionId
would start again at 0
.
There are two parameters to configure the idle state retention time:
The parameters are specified as follows:
Cleaning up state requires additional bookkeeping which becomes less expensive for larger differences of minTime
and maxTime
. The difference between minTime
and maxTime
must be at least 5 minutes.