Materialized Tables in Apache Flink

This article provides a detailed overview of Materialized Tables in Apache Flink, introduced in version 1.20 and enhanced in 2.2. It explains how Materialized Tables allow embedding SQL for table population and refresh within the table definition. The post covers prerequisites like a supporting catalog and scheduler, demonstrates using the test-filesystem catalog and SQL Gateway, and walks through creating source tables from Kafka, inserting data, and observing changelog behavior for unbounded streams. Aimed at developers and data engineers, it offers practical examples for leveraging this feature in streaming and batch scenarios.