Using Apache Flink SQL to Build Real-Time Streaming Apps

This post introduces SQL Workspaces, a new browser-based interface for Apache Flink SQL on Confluent Cloud. It details how Confluent Cloud environments, Kafka clusters, and topics are mapped to Flink's catalog, database, and table abstractions, respectively. The post highlights the ability to write ANSI-standard SQL against streaming data, the support for perpetual SQL statements with real-time output updates, and the UX improvements of multiple editors within a single workspace for development. It also describes the inline runtime metrics panel for monitoring streaming statement performance and contextual entry points from Kafka topic views and Data Portal to launch SQL Workspaces.