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Learn By Example : Apache Flink (Udemy.com)

30 solved examples on Stream and Batch processing

Created by: Loony Corn

Last updated March 2017

Our take

Based on the ratings of 412 students, a sample of their written reviews and the syllabus, as the course stood in March 2017. No course pays to be reviewed.

This is a short course, about three hours across 41 lectures and 12 sections. It covers the DataStream API, windows, state and checkpointing, and working with multiple streams, then takes quick looks at the DataSet API, Gelly for graphs and Flink-ML. Loonycorn, the teaching duo of Janani Ravi and Vitthal Srinivasan, built it around 30 worked examples. It assumes comfort with Java, Maven builds and an IDE, so it suits working engineers more than newcomers to programming.

Reviewers who like it praise the clear concepts, the animated diagrams and the brisk pace. One says it explains the basics better than other Flink courses on Udemy. The complaints are consistent, though. Several mention no downloadable source code, no help creating the project, and later examples that are shown but never run, so the output is a guess. Some find the narration fast or hard to follow because of the accent, and one calls the captions poor. Others wanted real-world pieces such as Kafka sources or database sinks.

The bigger issue is age. The last update was March 2017, and reviewers report an old Flink version and examples that no longer work. With 4.4 stars from 412 ratings and about 5,300 students, most people leave satisfied, but the group at three stars or lower is not small. Treat it as a short orientation to what Flink can do, then move to current docs or a newer course before building anything real. Anyone hoping to code along step by step will probably get frustrated.

Best forJava developers coming from Hadoop-style batch work who want a quick, concept-first map of Flink's streaming features.
Skip it ifYou want downloadable code, a current Flink version, or Kafka and database pipelines you could reuse at work.

Pros

  • Animated diagrams and clear explanations of why each Flink feature exists
  • Short lectures, each focused on one concept, so it is easy to dip into
  • Covers windows, state, checkpointing and multi-stream operations in about three hours
  • Reviewers call it a good first overview of Flink that explains the basics well

Cons

  • No downloadable source code, and no walkthrough of creating the Flink project
  • Last updated in 2017, so reviewers hit an old Flink version and broken examples
  • Fast pace, some examples never run on screen, and no Kafka or database pipelines
The examples are very clear and they are well explained. There are also graphical explanations, with animations, of what is going on in the Flink.
Pablo Grasso, a student

Marked All Levels, but it expects Java, Maven and an IDE, so it really suits working Java developers.

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What you will learn

  • Use the DataStream API for transforming streaming data
  • Use the DataSet API for batch processing
  • Apply window operations on Streaming data
  • Use Flink-ML for Machine Learning
  • Use Gelly for Graph processing

Course content

12 sections · 41 lectures · 3 hours of video

  1. 1Introduction 1 free preview1 lecture · 2 min
  2. 2Flink's Stream Processing Architecture 2 free previews4 lectures · 29 min
  3. 3Getting Started with Flink 1 free preview2 lectures · 8 min
  4. 4Hello World!2 lectures · 14 min
  5. 5Transformations using the DataStream API9 lectures · 33 min
  6. 6Window Operations8 lectures · 34 min
  7. 7Custom Sources1 lecture · 3 min
  8. 8State and Checkpointing4 lectures · 15 min
  9. 9Operations on Multiple Streams6 lectures · 19 min
  10. 10Transformations in the DataSet API1 lecture · 6 min

Who it is for

The instructor says it suits

  • Yep! Engineers looking to set up end-to-end data processing pipelines that react to changes in real time
  • Yep! Folks familiar with Batch processing technologies like Hadoop who want to learn more about Stream processing

What you need before you start

  • Experience in Java programming and familiarity with using Java frameworks
  • Building Jars with Maven, Compiling Java code and debugging
  • Install an IDE like IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse for Java and Scala programming

How it compares

Against the other 518 rated Udemy courses in Software Development on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.4 out of 5higher than 28% of them
  • Reviews412#250 of 519 by number of reviews
  • Length3 hoursshorter than 78% of them
  • Last updatedMarch 2017earlier than 97% of them

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Course Description

Flink is a stream processing technology with added capability to do lots of other things like batch processing, graph algorithms, machine learning etc.  Using Flink you can build applications which need you to be highly responsive to the latest data such as monitoring spikes in payment gateway failures or triggering trades based on live stock price movements. 

This course has 30 Solved Examples on building Flink Applications for both Streaming and Batch Processing

What's covered?

1) Transformations in the DataStream API : filter, map, flatMap and reduce

2) Operations on multiple streams : union, cogroup, connect, comap, join and iterate

3) Window operations : Tumbling, Sliding, Count and Session windows; the notion of time and how to implement custom Window functions 

4) Managing fault-tolerance with State and Checkpointing 

5) Transformations in the DataSet API : filter, map, reduce, reduceGroup

6) Applying ML algorithms on the fly using Flink-ML

7) Representing Graph data using Gelly

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Instructor Details

Loony Corn

Loonycorn is us, Janani Ravi and Vitthal Srinivasan. Between us, we have studied at Stanford, been admitted to IIM Ahmedabad and have spent years  working in tech, in the Bay Area, New York, Singapore and Bangalore.

Janani: 7 years at Google (New York, Singapore); Studied at Stanford; also worked at Flipkart and Microsoft

Vitthal: Also Google (Singapore) and studied at Stanford; Flipkart, Credit Suisse and INSEAD too

We think we might have hit upon a neat way of teaching complicated tech courses in a funny, practical, engaging way, which is why we are so excited to be here on Udemy!

We hope you will try our offerings, and think you'll like them :-)

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Reviews

4.4

412 ratings on Udemy

Select a bar to show only those reviews.Select the bar again to show every rating.

By Alexander Artemenko on 3/26/2025

This course will help you get to know Flink in general. A concise, systematic presentation of information that helps to understand in which direction you need to continue studying Flink depending on the tasks set for your own project. Personally, I missed the presentation of the work and the code listing

By Gautam Altman on 2/12/2024

Great course, loved the way it is taught and presented. Would love to be able to download the source code, this is my own criticism.

By Emmanuel Garcia de Santiago on 5/29/2023

Among the Flink courses that I have seen in Udemy, this is the one that best explains the basic concepts, this opinion is based on the fact that the courses that I have seen so far May 2023, have a very similar syllabus but without a doubt, it is the one that best explains why it is aimed at newbies. There are many more things in Flink that are not covered here, that's correct, but I think it does the job.

By Pablo Grasso on 8/27/2022

The examples are very clear and they are well explained. There are also graphical explanations, with animations, of what is going on in the Flink. The code shown is also well written and easy to follow.

By Eddie Cheung on 5/28/2021

This course only provide an overview of Flink. The way to present the code sample can be better, and each sample should be executed to show the input data and output data. Lack of sample how to hook up with Kafka as data source, and database as data sink. Not too practical for real task in your job.

By Daniel Golcher on 3/4/2020

I started feeling unsure because of the accent of the presenter, but that quickly became a non-issue. This is a good example of how an Udemy curse should be. Brief chapters focused on a single concept, well demonstrated and narrated. In the end it is not supposed that one would become an expert, instead one should be cognizant of most of the features a domain or tool provides in case one wants to dig deeper and self teach how to be an expert. Great course, thoroughly recommended.

By Ahsan on 1/1/2019

I already read all of the concepts before and this looks much summarized! However it was very fun in the start because starting exercise the instructor discusses/showed the output. Later it was just sort of jumping how it works only at code level. When explaining the output of program with above same this becomes more powerful.

By Venkta katakam on 10/16/2017

awesome lecture and presentation....really enjoyed...super voice, super presentation, meaning ful explanation with examples....Dont know how the time is passing with these lectures.

By Paul Lysak on 6/28/2017

The course gives pretty good introduction into what programmer developing applications with Flink would see. Material is well structured and easy to grasp. It doesn't give, however, enough insights into details required for solving real-worls problems - how is the program paralellized, how does Flink manage memory, how do we run application on cluster and what to expect from it etc. Besides that, I'd like also to complain a bit about code on the slides - the visual highlight of the piece of code which is currently being discussed is too strong, can't see the complete picture. Presentation would benefit from somewhat softer code highlight.

By Sandeep Kotagiri on 6/2/2017

I have only completed introduction to the course. And I am completely tuned. With continuous evolution of technologies and especially when they all look one and the same, it is hard to keep up with what does what. Introduction to this course started with the landscape of what technologies are available to do what. After introductory section, there are various sections on data transformations with examples. Examples are very clear to understand. However, this course does not come with any code. It would have been nice if the code was handy to quickly try running or making some code changes to test the understanding.

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Overall Score : 88 / 100