Hi Stephan, > On Nov 2, 2016, at 3:04am, Stephan Ewen <se...@apache.org> wrote: > > Hi Ken! > > It may not be obvious, so here is a bit of background: > > The timers that are used in the FlatMapFunction are scoped by key. We thought > that this is how they are mainly useful - that's why you need to define keys > to use them. > I think the docs are in error, thanks for pointing that out. > > In your use case, do you need timers without keys, or only access to the > current processing/event time?
I was hoping to use timers as an alternative approach for async generation of tuples. I’ve got several functions that use multi-threading to process the incoming tuples. These get put into a queue, processed by threads, and the results placed in another queue. With timers it seemed like I could regularly flush the output queue to the collector. So unkeyed data, yes. Though it wasn’t clear from the docs if/how I would set up a timer that regularly fires (say every 100ms). In any case I can keep using my current approach of having a “tickler” Tuple0 stream that I use with CoFlatMapFunctions. Regards, — Ken > On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 1:59 AM, Ken Krugler <kkrugler_li...@transpac.com > <mailto:kkrugler_li...@transpac.com>> wrote: > I’m curious why it seems like a TimelyFlatMapFunction can’t be used with a > regular DataStream, but it can be used with a KeyedStream. > > Or maybe I’m missing something obvious (this is with 1.2-SNAPSHOT, pulled > today). > > Also the documentation of TimelyFlatMapFunction > (https://ci.apache.org/projects/flink/flink-docs-master/api/java/index.html?org/apache/flink/streaming/api/functions/TimelyFlatMapFunction.html > > <https://ci.apache.org/projects/flink/flink-docs-master/api/java/index.html?org/apache/flink/streaming/api/functions/TimelyFlatMapFunction.html>) > shows using it with a DataStream.flatMap(xxx) call. > > Thanks, > > — Ken > > -------------------------- > Ken Krugler > +1 530-210-6378 <tel:%2B1%20530-210-6378> > http://www.scaleunlimited.com <http://www.scaleunlimited.com/> > custom big data solutions & training > Hadoop, Cascading, Cassandra & Solr > > > > -------------------------- Ken Krugler +1 530-210-6378 http://www.scaleunlimited.com custom big data solutions & training Hadoop, Cascading, Cassandra & Solr
