Hi everyone, I would like to start a discussion on FLIP-589: Introduce FILE Type for Byte-Content References [1].
This FLIP proposes to introduce FILE as a logical type for byte-content references. A FILE value describes where bytes can be read from, together with optional range and common metadata, but does not store the bytes themselves. The main motivation is multimodal processing. In pipelines that process images, audio, video, or documents, jobs often need to pass references and metadata through filtering, routing, joins, or inference preparation, while reading the actual content only at explicit processing stages. A dedicated FILE type provides a clearer contract than STRING URIs or ad-hoc ROW descriptors for SQL functions, connectors, planners, and UDFs. Looking forward to your feedback. [1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLINK/FLIP-589%3A+Introduce+FILE+Type+for+Byte-Content+References ---------- Best regards, dylanhz
