Flink Batch-Style Stream Processing on Google Cluster Data
1. High-Level Workflow
| # | Step | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Read the data-schema docs (format.pdf, ClusterData2011_2.md) | Column order, types, and event-type enums differ between task events (13 cols) and job events (8 cols). Getting these wrong silently produces empty output. |
| 2 | Inspect the skeleton & AppBase | The skeleton wires CLI arg parsing (ParameterTool) and may expose helper methods. AppBase expects data-type classes in clusterdata.datatypes. |
| 3 | Create POJO data types (TaskEvent, JobEvent) | Flink serialization works best with public-field POJOs or Tuples. Each class needs a static fromCsvLine(String) factory that tolerates empty/missing fields. |
| 4 | Implement a SourceFunction that reads gzipped CSV | The input files are .csv.gz. Flink's built-in readTextFile can handle gzip, but a custom SourceFunction gives full control over watermark emission and is more reliable for single-file batch-in-streaming mode. |
| 5 | Assign event-time timestamps & watermarks | Timestamps in the dataset are in microseconds. Flink watermarks operate in milliseconds. Divide by 1000. Use BoundedOutOfOrdernessTimestampExtractor or WatermarkStrategy.forBoundedOutOfOrderness. |
| 6 | Filter, key, window, aggregate | Filter to the relevant event type (e.g., SUBMIT = 0), key by jobId, apply EventTimeSessionWindows.withGap(Time.minutes(10)), and count elements per window. |
| 7 | Cross-stream coordination (e.g., "only finished jobs") | Union the aggregated stream with a marker stream derived from job events. Use KeyedProcessFunction with state to emit results only when both the aggregation result and the qualifying marker (e.g., FINISH = 4) are present. |
| 8 | Write output in the exact tuple format | The harness expects (jobId,count)\n — no spaces after commas, no header, one tuple per line. Use writeAsText on a DataStream<String> or a custom SinkFunction. |
| 9 | Build with Maven, run on local Flink | mvn clean package -DskipTests → flink run -t local -c <mainClass> <jar> --arg1 val1 ... |
| 10 | Verify output | wc -l, spot-check a few jobIds against `zcat |
2. Google Cluster Data Schema
Task Events — 13 columns
0 timestamp (microseconds) 1 missing_info 2 job_id (long) 3 task_index (int) 4 machine_id 5 event_type (int) 6 user 7 scheduling_class 8 priority 9 cpu_request 10 memory_request 11 disk_space_request 12 different_machines_restriction
Task event types: 0=SUBMIT, 1=SCHEDULE, 2=EVICT, 3=FAIL, 4=FINISH, 5=KILL, 6=LOST, 7=UPDATE_PENDING, 8=UPDATE_RUNNING
Job Events — 8 columns
0 timestamp (microseconds) 1 missing_info 2 job_id (long) 3 event_type (int) 4 user 5 scheduling_class 6 job_name 7 logical_job_name
Job event types: 0=SUBMIT, 1=SCHEDULE, 2=EVICT, 3=FAIL, 4=FINISH, 5=KILL, 6=LOST, 7=UPDATE_PENDING, 8=UPDATE_RUNNING
Key rules
- Timestamps are microseconds since epoch start of the trace (not Unix epoch).
- Fields can be empty strings — always guard with
field.isEmpty()before parsing. - Files are gzipped CSV (
.csv.gz), no header row. - A task is uniquely identified by
(job_id, task_index), but for counting SUBMIT events, each row is a separate event (resubmissions count separately).
3. POJO Data Types
TaskEvent.java
javapackage clusterdata.datatypes; import java.io.Serializable; public class TaskEvent implements Serializable { public long timestamp; // microseconds public int missingInfo; public long jobId; public int taskIndex; public long machineId; public int eventType; public String user; public int schedulingClass; public int priority; public double cpuRequest; public double memoryRequest; public double diskSpaceRequest; public int differentMachinesRestriction; public TaskEvent() {} public static TaskEvent fromCsvLine(String line) { String[] f = line.split(",", -1); if (f.length < 13) return null; try { TaskEvent e = new TaskEvent(); e.timestamp = f[0].isEmpty() ? 0L : Long.parseLong(f[0]); e.missingInfo = f[1].isEmpty() ? 0 : Integer.parseInt(f[1]); e.jobId = f[2].isEmpty() ? -1L : Long.parseLong(f[2]); e.taskIndex = f[3].isEmpty() ? 0 : Integer.parseInt(f[3]); e.machineId = f[4].isEmpty() ? -1L : Long.parseLong(f[4]); e.eventType = f[5].isEmpty() ? -1 : Integer.parseInt(f[5]); e.user = f[6]; e.schedulingClass = f[7].isEmpty() ? 0 : Integer.parseInt(f[7]); e.priority = f[8].isEmpty() ? 0 : Integer.parseInt(f[8]); e.cpuRequest = f[9].isEmpty() ? 0.0 : Double.parseDouble(f[9]); e.memoryRequest = f[10].isEmpty() ? 0.0 : Double.parseDouble(f[10]); e.diskSpaceRequest= f[11].isEmpty() ? 0.0 : Double.parseDouble(f[11]); e.differentMachinesRestriction = f[12].isEmpty() ? 0 : Integer.parseInt(f[12]); return e; } catch (NumberFormatException ex) { return null; } } }
JobEvent.java
javapackage clusterdata.datatypes; import java.io.Serializable; public class JobEvent implements Serializable { public long timestamp; public int missingInfo; public long jobId; public int eventType; public String user; public int schedulingClass; public String jobName; public String logicalJobName; public JobEvent() {} public static JobEvent fromCsvLine(String line) { String[] f = line.split(",", -1); if (f.length < 8) return null; try { JobEvent e = new JobEvent(); e.timestamp = f[0].isEmpty() ? 0L : Long.parseLong(f[0]); e.missingInfo = f[1].isEmpty() ? 0 : Integer.parseInt(f[1]); e.jobId = f[2].isEmpty() ? -1L : Long.parseLong(f[2]); e.eventType = f[3].isEmpty() ? -1 : Integer.parseInt(f[3]); e.user = f[4]; e.schedulingClass = f[5].isEmpty() ? 0 : Integer.parseInt(f[5]); e.jobName = f[6]; e.logicalJobName = f[7]; return e; } catch (NumberFormatException ex) { return null; } } }
4. Custom Gzipped-CSV SourceFunction
Flink's readTextFile can auto-detect .gz, but a custom SourceFunction is more explicit and avoids edge cases with parallelism on a single file.
javaimport org.apache.flink.streaming.api.functions.source.SourceFunction; import java.io.*; import java.util.zip.GZIPInputStream; public class GzipCsvSource implements SourceFunction<String> { private final String filePath; private volatile boolean running = true; public GzipCsvSource(String filePath) { this.filePath = filePath; } @Override public void run(SourceContext<String> ctx) throws Exception { try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader( new GZIPInputStream(new FileInputStream(filePath))))) { String line; while (running && (line = br.readLine()) != null) { ctx.collect(line); } } } @Override public void cancel() { running = false; } }
5. Watermark Strategy — Microseconds to Milliseconds
javaimport org.apache.flink.streaming.api.functions.timestamps.BoundedOutOfOrdernessTimestampExtractor; import org.apache.flink.streaming.api.windowing.time.Time; // For TaskEvent stream: .assignTimestampsAndWatermarks( new BoundedOutOfOrdernessTimestampExtractor<TaskEvent>(Time.seconds(0)) { @Override public long extractTimestamp(TaskEvent e) { return e.timestamp / 1000; // microseconds → milliseconds } } )
Use Time.seconds(0) for bounded-out-of-orderness when the data within a single partition file is roughly sorted. If you see missing results, increase to Time.seconds(1) or Time.minutes(1).
6. Session Window + Cross-Stream Join Pattern
The core pattern for "find the longest session per entity, but only for entities that satisfy a condition from another stream":
TaskEvents(SUBMIT) ──► keyBy(jobId) ──► SessionWindow(10min) ──► count ──► keyBy(jobId) ──► reduce(max) ──► union ──┐ ├──► keyBy(jobId) ──► KeyedProcessFunction ──► output JobEvents(FINISH) ──► map to Tuple2<jobId, -1L> (marker) ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The KeyedProcessFunction stores:
maxCount: the maximum session count seen so far for this jobisFinished: whether a FINISH marker arrived
It registers an event-time timer at Long.MAX_VALUE - 1. When the timer fires (after all data is processed and the final watermark propagates), it emits the result if isFinished is true.
javaimport org.apache.flink.api.common.state.ValueState; import org.apache.flink.api.common.state.ValueStateDescriptor; import org.apache.flink.api.java.tuple.Tuple2; import org.apache.flink.configuration.Configuration; import org.apache.flink.streaming.api.functions.KeyedProcessFunction; import org.apache.flink.util.Collector; public class EmitFinishedJobs extends KeyedProcessFunction<Long, Tuple2<Long, Long>, String> { private transient ValueState<Long> maxCount; private transient ValueState<Boolean> finished; private transient ValueState<Boolean> timerSet; @Override public void open(Configuration parameters) { maxCount = getRuntimeContext().getState( new ValueStateDescriptor<>("maxCount", Long.class)); finished = getRuntimeContext().getState( new ValueStateDescriptor<>("finished", Boolean.class)); timerSet = getRuntimeContext().getState( new ValueStateDescriptor<>("timerSet", Boolean.class)); } @Override public void processElement(Tuple2<Long, Long> value, Context ctx, Collector<String> out) throws Exception { if (value.f1 == -1L) { // This is a FINISH marker from the job-events stream finished.update(true); } else { // This is a session count from the task-events stream Long cur = maxCount.value(); if (cur == null || value.f1 > cur) { maxCount.update(value.f1); } } // Register a single end-of-time timer per key if (timerSet.value() == null) { ctx.timerService().registerEventTimeTimer(Long.MAX_VALUE - 1); timerSet.update(true); } } @Override public void onTimer(long timestamp, OnTimerContext ctx, Collector<String> out) throws Exception { Boolean fin = finished.value(); Long cnt = maxCount.value(); if (fin != null && fin && cnt != null) { out.collect("(" + ctx.getCurrentKey() + "," + cnt + ")"); } } }
7. Output Format
The test harness compares (jobId,count) tuples. Rules:
- One tuple per line
- Format:
(jobId,count)— parentheses, comma, no spaces - No header, no trailing blank line (Flink's
writeAsTextis fine) - Order does not matter
- The harness compares the count for each jobId
java// Final stream is DataStream<String> already formatted resultStream.writeAsText(outputPath, org.apache.flink.core.fs.FileSystem.WriteMode.OVERWRITE) .setParallelism(1); // single output file
8. Build & Run
bash# Build cd /app/workspace mvn clean package -DskipTests # Run on local Flink /opt/flink/bin/flink run -t local \ -c clusterdata.query.LongestSessionPerJob \ /app/workspace/target/LongestSessionPerJob-jar-with-dependencies.jar \ --task_input /app/workspace/data/task_events/part-00001-of-00500.csv.gz \ --job_input /app/workspace/data/job_events/part-00001-of-00500.csv.gz \ --output /app/workspace/out.txt # Quick verification wc -l /app/workspace/out.txt head -5 /app/workspace/out.txt
9. Common Pitfalls
Pitfall 1: Timestamp unit mismatch
The dataset uses microseconds. Flink watermarks and windows use milliseconds. If you forget to divide by 1000, session windows of 10 minutes (600,000 ms) become 0.6 seconds in data-time, and every single SUBMIT event becomes its own session.
Pitfall 2: Empty CSV fields cause NumberFormatException
Many fields in the CSV are empty strings. Always check field.isEmpty() before Long.parseLong() / Integer.parseInt(). Return a safe default or null (and filter nulls downstream).
Pitfall 3: Wrong column count / column order
Task events have 13 columns, job events have 8. If you use the wrong schema for the wrong file, parsing silently produces garbage. Double-check by zcat file.gz | head -1 | tr ',' '\n' | wc -l.
Pitfall 4: Using processing time instead of event time
The default time characteristic in modern Flink is event time, but you must still assign timestamps and watermarks. Without watermarks, windows never fire.
Pitfall 5: Parallelism > 1 for output
If the output sink has parallelism > 1, Flink writes multiple part files instead of a single file. The test harness expects a single file. Always .setParallelism(1) on the sink.
Pitfall 6: Forgetting to handle resubmissions
"If the same task is submitted then failed/evicted and resubmitted again, these should be counted separately." Each SUBMIT row is a separate event — do NOT deduplicate by (jobId, taskIndex).
Pitfall 7: Not filtering to FINISH jobs
The task asks for results "once the job has finished." You must cross-reference with job events where event_type == 4 (FINISH). Outputting all jobs will fail the test.
Pitfall 8: Session window gap semantics
EventTimeSessionWindows.withGap(Time.minutes(10)) means a new window starts when there is a gap of ≥ 10 minutes between consecutive events. Events exactly 10 minutes apart are in different sessions (the gap is exclusive). This matches the task definition of "inactivity period of 10 minutes."
Pitfall 9: Timer not firing
The Long.MAX_VALUE - 1 timer fires when the final watermark (Long.MAX_VALUE) propagates. This only happens when all sources finish. If a source never completes (e.g., infinite streaming source), the timer never fires. The custom GzipCsvSource naturally completes when the file ends, so this works for batch-in-streaming mode.
10. Reference Implementation
This is the complete, self-contained LongestSessionPerJob.java. Copy, adapt, and build.
javapackage clusterdata.query; import clusterdata.datatypes.JobEvent; import clusterdata.datatypes.TaskEvent; import clusterdata.utils.AppBase; import org.apache.flink.api.common.state.ValueState; import org.apache.flink.api.common.state.ValueStateDescriptor; import org.apache.flink.api.java.tuple.Tuple2; import org.apache.flink.api.java.utils.ParameterTool; import org.apache.flink.configuration.Configuration; import org.apache.flink.core.fs.FileSystem; import org.apache.flink.streaming.api.TimeCharacteristic; import org.apache.flink.streaming.api.datastream.DataStream; import org.apache.flink.streaming.api.environment.StreamExecutionEnvironment; import org.apache.flink.streaming.api.functions.KeyedProcessFunction; import org.apache.flink.streaming.api.functions.source.SourceFunction; import org.apache.flink.streaming.api.functions.timestamps.BoundedOutOfOrdernessTimestampExtractor; import org.apache.flink.streaming.api.functions.windowing.WindowFunction; import org.apache.flink.streaming.api.windowing.assigners.EventTimeSessionWindows; import org.apache.flink.streaming.api.windowing.time.Time; import org.apache.flink.streaming.api.windowing.windows.TimeWindow; import org.apache.flink.util.Collector; import java.io.*; import java.util.zip.GZIPInputStream; public class LongestSessionPerJob extends AppBase { public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { ParameterTool params = ParameterTool.fromArgs(args); String taskInput = params.getRequired("task_input"); String jobInput = params.getRequired("job_input"); String output = params.getRequired("output"); System.out.println("task_input " + taskInput); System.out.println("job_input " + jobInput); StreamExecutionEnvironment env = StreamExecutionEnvironment.getExecutionEnvironment(); env.setStreamTimeCharacteristic(TimeCharacteristic.EventTime); env.setParallelism(1); // ── Task-event stream: SUBMIT events only ────────────────────── DataStream<TaskEvent> taskEvents = env .addSource(new GzipCsvSource(taskInput)) .map(line -> TaskEvent.fromCsvLine(line)) .filter(e -> e != null && e.eventType == 0) // SUBMIT .assignTimestampsAndWatermarks( new BoundedOutOfOrdernessTimestampExtractor<TaskEvent>( Time.seconds(0)) { @Override public long extractTimestamp(TaskEvent e) { return e.timestamp / 1000; // μs → ms } }); // Count tasks per session (10-min gap), per job DataStream<Tuple2<Long, Long>> sessionCounts = taskEvents .keyBy(e -> e.jobId) .window(EventTimeSessionWindows.withGap(Time.minutes(10))) .apply(new WindowFunction<TaskEvent, Tuple2<Long, Long>, Long, TimeWindow>() { @Override public void apply(Long jobId, TimeWindow window, Iterable<TaskEvent> input, Collector<Tuple2<Long, Long>> out) { long count = 0; for (TaskEvent ignored : input) count++; out.collect(new Tuple2<>(jobId, count)); } }); // Keep only the max session per job DataStream<Tuple2<Long, Long>> maxPerJob = sessionCounts .keyBy(t -> t.f0) .reduce((a, b) -> a.f1 >= b.f1 ? a : b); // ── Job-event stream: FINISH markers ─────────────────────────── DataStream<Tuple2<Long, Long>> finishMarkers = env .addSource(new GzipCsvSource(jobInput)) .map(line -> JobEvent.fromCsvLine(line)) .filter(e -> e != null && e.eventType == 4) // FINISH .assignTimestampsAndWatermarks( new BoundedOutOfOrdernessTimestampExtractor<JobEvent>( Time.seconds(0)) { @Override public long extractTimestamp(JobEvent e) { return e.timestamp / 1000; } }) .map(e -> new Tuple2<>(e.jobId, -1L)) .returns(org.apache.flink.api.common.typeinfo.Types .TUPLE(org.apache.flink.api.common.typeinfo.Types.LONG, org.apache.flink.api.common.typeinfo.Types.LONG)); // ── Union & emit only finished jobs ──────────────────────────── DataStream<String> result = maxPerJob .union(finishMarkers) .keyBy(t -> t.f0) .process(new KeyedProcessFunction<Long, Tuple2<Long, Long>, String>() { private transient ValueState<Long> maxCount; private transient ValueState<Boolean> finished; private transient ValueState<Boolean> timerSet; @Override public void open(Configuration cfg) { maxCount = getRuntimeContext().getState( new ValueStateDescriptor<>("mc", Long.class)); finished = getRuntimeContext().getState( new ValueStateDescriptor<>("fin", Boolean.class)); timerSet = getRuntimeContext().getState( new ValueStateDescriptor<>("ts", Boolean.class)); } @Override public void processElement( Tuple2<Long, Long> val, Context ctx, Collector<String> out) throws Exception { if (val.f1 == -1L) { finished.update(true); } else { Long cur = maxCount.value(); if (cur == null || val.f1 > cur) { maxCount.update(val.f1); } } if (timerSet.value() == null) { ctx.timerService() .registerEventTimeTimer(Long.MAX_VALUE - 1); timerSet.update(true); } } @Override public void onTimer(long ts, OnTimerContext ctx, Collector<String> out) throws Exception { Boolean fin = finished.value(); Long cnt = maxCount.value(); if (fin != null && fin && cnt != null) { out.collect("(" + ctx.getCurrentKey() + "," + cnt + ")"); } } }); result.writeAsText(output, FileSystem.WriteMode.OVERWRITE) .setParallelism(1); env.execute("LongestSessionPerJob"); } // ── Gzipped CSV source ───────────────────────────────────────────── public static class GzipCsvSource implements SourceFunction<String> { private final String path; private volatile boolean running = true; public GzipCsvSource(String path) { this.path = path; } @Override public void run(SourceContext<String> ctx) throws Exception { try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader( new GZIPInputStream( new FileInputStream(path))))) { String line; while (running && (line = br.readLine()) != null) { ctx.collect(line); } } } @Override public void cancel() { running = false; } } }
Supporting files needed alongside the reference implementation
clusterdata/datatypes/TaskEvent.java — see Section 3 above (full code provided).
clusterdata/datatypes/JobEvent.java — see Section 3 above (full code provided).
pom.xml — do not modify; it defines the main class and the jar-with-dependencies build.
Build & run commands
bashcd /app/workspace mvn clean package -DskipTests /opt/flink/bin/flink run -t local \ -c clusterdata.query.LongestSessionPerJob \ target/LongestSessionPerJob-jar-with-dependencies.jar \ --task_input /app/workspace/data/task_events/part-00001-of-00500.csv.gz \ --job_input /app/workspace/data/job_events/part-00001-of-00500.csv.gz \ --output /app/workspace/out.txt
Verification checklist
bash# 1. File exists and has content wc -l /app/workspace/out.txt # 2. Format is correct head -5 /app/workspace/out.txt # Expected: (12345,7) — parentheses, no spaces # 3. Spot-check a specific job JOB=6253404208 # pick from output zcat data/task_events/part-00001-of-00500.csv.gz \ | awk -F, '$3=="'$JOB'" && $6=="0"' | wc -l # This gives total SUBMIT count; the output count should be ≤ this # (it's the max session, not total) # 4. Confirm only finished jobs appear zcat data/job_events/part-00001-of-00500.csv.gz \ | awk -F, '$4=="4" {print $3}' | sort -u > /tmp/finished_jobs.txt awk -F'[(),]' '{print $2}' /app/workspace/out.txt | sort -u > /tmp/output_jobs.txt comm -23 /tmp/output_jobs.txt /tmp/finished_jobs.txt # Should produce no output (all output jobs are finished)
11. Adaptation Guide for Similar Tasks
| Variation | What to change |
|---|---|
| Different event-type filter | Change the filter(e -> e.eventType == X) predicate |
| Different window type (tumbling, sliding) | Replace EventTimeSessionWindows with TumblingEventTimeWindows or SlidingEventTimeWindows |
| Different gap duration | Change Time.minutes(10) to the required gap |
| Aggregate differently (sum, avg, min) | Change the WindowFunction body and the downstream reduce |
| No cross-stream filter | Remove the job-events stream, the union, and the KeyedProcessFunction; write session counts directly |
| Multiple output fields | Change the onTimer output format to match the required tuple schema |
| Different dataset columns | Adjust the POJO field count and fromCsvLine parsing indices |


