Hi everyone, Leonard and I prepared a FLIP about refactoring current Descriptor API, i.e. TableEnvironment#connect(). We would like to propose a new descriptor API to register connectors in Table API.
Since Flink 1.9, the community focused more on the new SQL DDL feature. After a series of releases, the SQL DDL is powerful and has many rich features now. However, Descriptor API (the `TableEnvironment#connect()`) has been stagnant for a long time and missing lots of core features, such as computed columns and primary keys. That's frustrating for Table API users who want to register tables programmatically. Besides, currently, a connector must implement a corresponding Descriptor (e.g. `new Kafka()`) before using the "connect" API. Therefore, we hope to reduce this effort for connector developers, that custom source/sinks can be registered via the descriptor API without implementing a Descriptor. These are the problems we want to resolve in this FLIP. I'm looking forward to your comments. https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLINK/FLIP-129%3A+Refactor+Descriptor+API+to+register+connector+for+Table+API Best, Jark
