[FLINK-8558] Add unified format interfaces and format discovery

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 1.6.0
• Component/s: Formats (JSON, Avro, Parquet, ORC, SequenceFile)
• Labels: pull-request-available
• Assignee: Timo Walther
• Reporter: Timo Walther
• Created: 05/Feb/18 10:48
• Updated: 27/Feb/19 15:13
• Resolved: 15/Jul/18 09:25

Description

In the last release, we introduced a new module flink-formats. Currently only flink-avro is located there but we will add more formats such as flink-json, flink-protobuf, and so on. For better separation of concerns we want decouple connectors from formats: e.g., remove KafkaAvroTableSource and KafkaJsonTableSource.

A newly introduced FormatFactory will use Java service loaders to discovery available formats in the classpath (similar to how file systems are discovered now). A Format will provide a method for converting byte[] to target record type.

Issue Links

• blocks: FLINK-8535 Implement a basic set of table factories
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #6264
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #6323

Sub-Tasks

• Add proper support for JSON formats: Closed
• Support Protocol Buffers formats: Open