Hi David, Ramin, Sergey, I would like to express strong support for this FLIP! I am writing to you as an Apache Iceberg contributor. :)
In the Iceberg community, we are highly anticipating first-class geospatial support in Flink. With Apache Iceberg v3, the table specification now natively supports GEOGRAPHY spatial types (backed by WKB). For Flink users to seamlessly read, write, and query these tables, having native GEOGRAPHY support in Flink SQL and the Table API is a crucial prerequisite. We are eager to leverage this FLIP to implement Iceberg's Geo Type support on Flink. Regarding the implementation path, while aligning with Calcite is a great long-term goal, making a Calcite-first implementation a hard blocker will significantly delay this FLIP. The process of introducing the type in Calcite, waiting for a Calcite release, and then upgrading Calcite in Flink is historically a 1-to-2 year journey. We saw similar situation with Flink variant support. At that time Calcite was supporting Variant. In this case There is no type in Calcite also. Ramin and Sergey, what do you think about Flink introducing GEOGRAPHY as a native logical type (backed by WKB) within its own type system first? This would unblock the Iceberg-Flink integration immediately, while the community can explore upstreaming or refactoring toward Calcite as a secondary, non-blocking phase. I believe implementing this natively within Flink first is the most pragmatic way to deliver value to the community quickly without stalling ecosystem integrations. Thank you again, David, for initiating this FLIP. I look forward to contributing to and supporting this effort from the Iceberg side! Best regards, Talat Apache Iceberg Contributor
