Hi everyone,
you might have seen that we discussed a better schema API in past as
part of FLIP-129 and FLIP-136. We also discussed this topic during
different releases:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-17793
Jark and I had an offline discussion how we can finally fix this
shortcoming and maintain backwards compatibile for a couple of releases
to give people time to update their code.
I would like to propose the following FLIP:
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLINK/FLIP-164%3A+Improve+Schema+Handling+in+Catalogs
The FLIP updates the class hierarchy to achieve the following goals:
- make it visible whether a schema is resolved or unresolved and when
the resolution happens
- offer a unified API for FLIP-129, FLIP-136, and catalogs
- allow arbitrary data types and expressions in the schema for watermark
spec or columns
- have access to other catalogs for declaring a data type or expression
via CatalogManager
- a cleaned up TableSchema
- remain backwards compatible in the persisted properties and API
Looking forward to your feedback.
Thanks,
Timo
