@PublicEvolving
public interface Procedure

Base interface representing a stored procedure that can be executed by Flink. An stored procedure accepts zero, one, or multiple input parameters and then return the execution result of the stored procedure.

The behavior of Procedure can be defined by implements a custom call method. An call method must be declared publicly, not static, and named call. Call methods can also be overloaded by implementing multiple methods named call. Currently, it doesn't allow users to custom their own procedure, the customer Procedure can only be provided by Catalog. To provide Procedure, Catalog must implement Catalog.getProcedure(ObjectPath).

When calling a stored procedure, Flink will always pass the org.apache.flink.table.procedure.ProcedureContext which provides StreamExecutionEnvironment currently as the first parameter of the call method. So, the custom call method must accept the org.apache.flink.table.procedure.ProcedureContext as the first parameter, and the other parameters of the call method are the actual parameter of the stored procedure.

By default, input and output data types are automatically extracted using reflection. The input arguments are derived from one or more call() methods. If the reflective information is not sufficient, it can be supported and enriched with DataTypeHint and ProcedureHint. If ProcedureHint is used to hint input arguments, it should only hint the input arguments that start from the second argument since the first argument is always ProcedureContext which doesn't need to be annotated with data type hint.

Note: The return type of the call() method should always be T[] where T can be an atomic type, Row, Pojo. An atomic type will be implicitly wrapped into a row consisting of one field. Also, the DataTypeHint for output data type is used to hint T.

The following examples with pseudocode show how to write a stored procedure:


 // a stored procedure that tries to rewrite data files for iceberg, it accept STRING
 // and return an array of explicit ROW < STRING, STRING >.
 class IcebergRewriteDataFilesProcedure implements Procedure {
   public @DataTypeHint("ROW< rewritten_data_files_count STRING, added_data_files_count STRING >")
          Row[] call(ProcedureContext procedureContext, String tableName) {
     // plan for scanning the table to do rewriting
     Table table = loadTable(tableName);
     List<CombinedScanTask> combinedScanTasks = planScanTask(table);

     // now, rewrite the files according to the planning task
     StreamExecutionEnvironment env = procedureContext.getExecutionEnvironment();
     DataStream<CombinedScanTask> dataStream = env.fromCollection(combinedScanTasks);
     RowDataRewriter rowDataRewriter =
         new RowDataRewriter(table(), caseSensitive(), fileIO(), encryptionManager());
     List<DataFile> addedDataFiles；
     try {
       addedDataFiles = rowDataRewriter.rewriteDataForTasks(dataStream, parallelism);
     } catch (Exception e) {
       throw new RuntimeException("Rewrite data file error.", e);
     }

     // replace the current files
     List<DataFile> currentDataFiles = combinedScanTasks.stream()
             .flatMap(tasks -> tasks.files().stream().map(FileScanTask::file))
             .collect(Collectors.toList());
     replaceDataFiles(currentDataFiles, addedDataFiles, startingSnapshotId);

     // return the result for rewriting
     return new Row[] {Row.of(currentDataFiles.size(), addedDataFiles.size())};
   }
 }

 // a stored procedure that accepts < STRING, LONG > and
 // return an array of STRING without datatype hint.
 class RollbackToSnapShotProcedure implements Procedure {
   public String[] call(ProcedureContext procedureContext, String tableName, Long snapshot) {
     Table table = loadTable(tableName);
     Long previousSnapShotId = table.currentSnapshot();
     table.manageSnapshots().rollbackTo(snapshotId).commit();
     return new String[] {
             "previous_snapshot_id: " + previousSnapShotId,
             "current_snapshot_id " + snapshot
     };
   }
 }

In term of the API, a stored procedure can be used as follows:


 // for SQL users
 TableEnvironment tEnv = ...
 tEnv.executeSql("CALL rollback_to_snapshot('t', 1001)");

Interface Procedure