[FLINK-19319] Deprecate StreamExecutionEnvironment.setStreamTimeCharacteristic() and TimeCharacteristic

• Type: Sub-task
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 1.12.0
• Component/s: API / DataStream

Release Note

This is formatted in Markdown for easy inclusion in the release post.

In Flink 1.12 the default stream time characteristic has been changed to `EventTime`, thus you don't need to call this method for enabling event-time support anymore. Explicitly using processing-time windows and timers works in event-time mode. If you need to disable watermarks, please use `ExecutionConfig.setAutoWatermarkInterval(long)`. If you are using `IngestionTime`, please manually set an appropriate `WatermarkStrategy`. If you are using generic "time window" operations (for example `KeyedStream.timeWindow()` that change behaviour based on the time characteristic, please use equivalent operations that explicitly specify processing time or event time.

• Assignee: Aljoscha Krettek
• Reporter: Aljoscha Krettek
• Created: 21/Sep/20 09:17
• Updated: 30/Jul/21 17:53
• Resolved: 01/Oct/20 15:18

Description

After FLINK-19317 and FLINK-19318 we don't need this setting anymore. Using (explicit) processing-time windows and processing-time timers work fine in a program that has EventTime set as a time characteristic and once we deprecate timeWindow() there are not other operations that change behaviour depending on the time characteristic so there's no need to ever change from the new default of event-time. Similarly, the IngestionTime setting can be achieved in the future by providing an ingestion-time WatermarkStrategy.