Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Apache Flink VS Amazon Redshift

Compare Apache Flink VS Amazon Redshift and see what are their differences

Apache Flink logo Apache Flink

Flink is a streaming dataflow engine that provides data distribution, communication, and fault tolerance for distributed computations.

Amazon Redshift logo Amazon Redshift

Learn about Amazon Redshift cloud data warehouse.
  • Apache Flink Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-03
  • Amazon Redshift Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-14

Apache Flink features and specs

  • Real-time Stream Processing
    Apache Flink is designed for real-time data streaming, offering low-latency processing capabilities that are essential for applications requiring immediate data insights.
  • Event Time Processing
    Flink supports event time processing, which allows it to handle out-of-order events effectively and provide accurate results based on the time events actually occurred rather than when they were processed.
  • State Management
    Flink provides robust state management features, making it easier to maintain and query state across distributed nodes, which is crucial for managing long-running applications.
  • Fault Tolerance
    The framework includes built-in mechanisms for fault tolerance, such as consistent checkpoints and savepoints, ensuring high reliability and data consistency even in the case of failures.
  • Scalability
    Apache Flink is highly scalable, capable of handling both batch and stream processing workloads across a distributed cluster, making it suitable for large-scale data processing tasks.
  • Rich Ecosystem
    Flink has a rich set of APIs and integrations with other big data tools, such as Apache Kafka, Apache Hadoop, and Apache Cassandra, enhancing its versatility and ease of integration into existing data pipelines.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Flink

  • Complexity
    Flinkโ€™s advanced features and capabilities come with a steep learning curve, making it more challenging to set up and use compared to simpler stream processing frameworks.
  • Resource Intensive
    The framework can be resource-intensive, requiring substantial memory and CPU resources for optimal performance, which might be a concern for smaller setups or cost-sensitive environments.
  • Community Support
    While growing, the community around Apache Flink is not as large or mature as some other big data frameworks like Apache Spark, potentially limiting the availability of community-contributed resources and support.
  • Ecosystem Maturity
    Despite its integrations, the Flink ecosystem is still maturing, and certain tools and plugins may not be as developed or stable as those available for more established frameworks.
  • Operational Overhead
    Running and maintaining a Flink cluster can involve significant operational overhead, including monitoring, scaling, and troubleshooting, which might require a dedicated team or additional expertise.

Amazon Redshift features and specs

  • Scalability
    Amazon Redshift allows you to scale your data warehouse up or down easily based on your needs with just a few clicks or by using the API, providing flexibility to handle varying workloads.
  • Performance
    Redshift uses columnar storage, parallel processing, and efficient data compression techniques to deliver high performance for complex queries and large datasets.
  • Integration
    It seamlessly integrates with various AWS services like S3, DynamoDB, and QuickSight, making it easier to build a comprehensive data ecosystem.
  • Cost-effective
    Redshift offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model with no upfront costs, and you can save more with reserved instances, making it cost-effective for many businesses.
  • Security
    It includes features like encryption, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), and compliance certifications (such as SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, and more) to ensure data security and compliance.
  • Managed Service
    Amazon Redshift is a fully managed service, so it takes care of managing, monitoring, and scaling the infrastructure, allowing you to focus on your data and insights.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon Redshift

  • Complexity
    Although Redshift is powerful, it can be complex to set up, configure, and optimize for best performance, requiring knowledge and experience in data warehousing.
  • Cost for Unused Resources
    While Redshift is cost-effective for large-scale operations, costs can add up quickly if resources are not managed properly, especially with long-running clusters that are under-utilized.
  • Maintenance Windows
    Despite being a managed service, maintenance windows and updates can occasionally lead to downtime or performance degradation, impacting availability.
  • Data Transfer Costs
    Transferring data in and out of Redshift can incur additional costs, particularly if large volumes of data are involved, which can affect overall budget planning.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Using Amazon Redshift ties you to the AWS ecosystem, which could be a disadvantage if you are considering a multi-cloud strategy or planning to switch providers in the future.

Analysis of Apache Flink

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Apache Flink is considered a good distributed stream processing framework.

Why this product is good

  • Rich api
    Flink offers a rich set of APIs for various levels of abstraction, catering to different needs of developers.
  • Scalability
    Flink provides excellent horizontal scalability, making it suitable for handling large data streams and high-throughput applications.
  • Fault tolerance
    Flink's checkpointing mechanism ensures fault-tolerance, maintaining data state consistency even after failures.
  • Ease of integration
    Flink integrates well with other big data tools and ecosystems, facilitating broader data architecture designs.
  • Real-time processing
    It excels at processing data in real-time, allowing for immediate insights and action on streaming data.
  • Community and support
    Being a part of the Apache Software Foundation, Flink benefits from a large community and comprehensive documentation.
  • Complex event processing
    It supports complex event processing, which is essential for many real-time applications.

Recommended for

  • real-time analytics
  • stream data processing
  • complex event processing
  • machine learning in streaming applications
  • applications requiring high-throughput and low-latency processing
  • companies looking for robust fault-tolerance in distributed systems

Analysis of Amazon Redshift

Overall verdict

  • Amazon Redshift is generally considered a good solution for businesses seeking a robust, scalable, and cost-effective data warehousing service within the AWS cloud environment. However, its suitability may vary depending on specific organizational needs and workloads.

Why this product is good

  • Amazon Redshift is a popular data warehousing service within the AWS ecosystem, known for its scalability, ease of integration with other AWS services, and relatively low cost. It provides fast query performance for large datasets and offers features like columnar storage, parallel query execution, and advanced compression. These attributes make it an attractive choice for organizations looking to perform complex analytics and data processing tasks.

Recommended for

  • Organizations already utilizing AWS services and seeking seamless integration.
  • Businesses requiring scalable data warehousing at a competitive price.
  • Data-driven companies looking to perform fast, complex analytics on large datasets.
  • Teams needing flexible management options that can grow with their data storage needs.

Apache Flink videos

GOTO 2019 โ€ข Introduction to Stateful Stream Processing with Apache Flink โ€ข Robert Metzger

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Apache Flink Tutorial | Flink vs Spark | Real Time Analytics Using Flink | Apache Flink Training
  • Tutorial - How to build a modern stream processor: The science behind Apache Flink - Stefan Richter

Amazon Redshift videos

Getting Started with Amazon Redshift - AWS Online Tech Talks

More videos:

  • Review - Amazon Redshift Materialized Views
  • Tutorial - Amazon Redshift Tutorial | Amazon Redshift Architecture | AWS Tutorial For Beginners | Simplilearn

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Apache Flink and Amazon Redshift)
Big Data
59 59%
41% 41
Databases
41 41%
59% 59
Stream Processing
100 100%
0% 0
Data Management
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Apache Flink and Amazon Redshift. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Apache Flink and Amazon Redshift

Apache Flink Reviews

We have no reviews of Apache Flink yet.
Be the first one to post

Amazon Redshift Reviews

Data Warehouse Tools
No, SQL (Structured Query Language) is not a data warehouse itself. SQL is a programming language used for managing and querying data stored in relational database management systems (RDBMS) and data warehouses. Many data warehouse solutions, such as Peliqan, Amazon Redshift, and PostgreSQL, support SQL for querying and analyzing data within the data warehouse
Source: peliqan.io
Top 6 Cloud Data Warehouses in 2023
Coined in November 2021, Amazon Redshift was launched as a fully managed cloud data warehouse that can handle petabyte-scale data. While it was not the first cloud data warehouse, it became the first to proliferate in the market share after a large-scale adoption. Redshift uses SQL dialect based on PostgreSQL, which is well-known by many analysts globally, and its...
Source: geekflare.com
Top 5 Cloud Data Warehouses in 2023
Jan 11, 2023 The 5 best cloud data warehouse solutions in 2023Google BigQuerySource: https://cloud.google.com/bigqueryBest for:Top features:Pros:Cons:Pricing:SnowflakeBest for:Top features:Pros:Cons:Pricing:Amazon RedshiftSource: https://aws.amazon.com/redshift/Best for:Top features:Pros:Cons:Pricing:FireboltSource: https://www.firebolt.io/Best for:Top...
Top 5 BigQuery Alternatives: A Challenge of Complexity
As the most proven tool in this category, Amazon Redshift is a fully managed cloud-based data warehouse used to collect and store data. Like BigQuery, Redshift seamlessly integrates with multiple products and ETL services.
Source: blog.panoply.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Flink should be more popular than Amazon Redshift. It has been mentiond 45 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Apache Flink mentions (45)

  • Gravitino - the unified metadata lake
    In the meantime, other query engine support is on the roadmap, including Apache Spark, Apache Flink, and others. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Towards Sub-100ms Latency Stream Processing with an S3-Based Architecture
    Many stream processing systems today still rely on local disks and RocksDB to manage state. This model has been around for a while and works fine in simple, single-tenant setups. Apache Flink, for example, uses RocksDB as its default state backend - state is kept on local disks, and periodic checkpoints are written to external storage for recovery. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Introducing RisingWave's Hosted Iceberg Catalog-No External Setup Needed
    Because the hosted catalog is a standard JDBC catalog, tools like Spark, Trino, and Flink can still access your tables. For example:. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • When plans change at 500 feet: Complex event processing of ADS-B aviation data with Apache Flink
    I wrote a python based aircraft monitor which polls the adsb.fi feed for aircraft transponder messages, and publishes each location update as a new event into an Apache Kafka topic. I used Apache Flink โ€” and more specially Flink SQL, to transform and analyse my flight data. The TL;DR summary is I can write SQL for my real-time data processing queries โ€” and get the scalability, fault tolerance, and low latency... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • What is Apache Flink? Exploring Its Open Source Business Model, Funding, and Community
    Continuous Learning: Leverage online tutorials from the official Flink website and attend webinars for deeper insights. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
View more

Amazon Redshift mentions (29)

  • How to Pitch Your Boss to Adopt Apache Iceberg?
    If your team is managing large volumes of historical data using platforms like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, or Google BigQuery, youโ€™ve probably noticed a shift happening in the data engineering world. A new generation of data infrastructure is forming โ€” one that prioritizes openness, interoperability, and cost-efficiency. At the center of that shift is Apache Iceberg. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Everyone Uses Postgresโ€ฆ But Why?
    Postgres can be easily adapted to build highly tailored solutions. For instance, Amazon Redshift can be considered a highly scalable fork of Postgres. Itโ€™s a distributed database focusing on OLAP workloads that you can deploy in AWS. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • From ETL and ELT to Reverse ETL
    With the transition from ETL to ELT, data warehouses have ascended to the role of data custodians, centralizing customer data collected from fragmented systems. This pivotal shift has been enabled by a suite of powerful tools: Fivetran and Airbyte streamline the extraction and loading, DBT handles the transformation, and robust warehousing solutions like Snowflake and Redshift store the data. While traditionally... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Choosing Between a Streaming Database and a Stream Processing Framework in Python
    They differ from conventional analytic databases like Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, and Oracle in several ways. Conventional databases are batch-oriented, loading data in defined windows like hourly, daily, weekly, and so on. While loading data, conventional databases lock the tables, making the newly loaded data unavailable until the batch load is fully completed. Streaming databases continuously receive new... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Choosing the Right AWS Database: A Guide for Modern Applications
    Data warehousing is the process of storing and analyzing large volumes of data for business intelligence and analytics purposes. AWS offers a fully managed data warehousing service called Amazon Redshift that can handle petabyte-scale data warehouses with ease. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Apache Flink and Amazon Redshift, you can also consider the following products

Apache Spark - Apache Spark is an engine for big data processing, with built-in modules for streaming, SQL, machine learning and graph processing.

Google BigQuery - A fully managed data warehouse for large-scale data analytics.

Amazon Kinesis - Amazon Kinesis services make it easy to work with real-time streaming data in the AWS cloud.

Microsoft SQL Server - Microsoft Azure is an open, flexible, enterprise-grade cloud computing platform. Move faster, do more, and save money with IaaS + PaaS. Try for FREE.

Spring Framework - The Spring Framework provides a comprehensive programming and configuration model for modern Java-based enterprise applications - on any kind of deployment platform.

Snowflake - Snowflake is the only data platform built for the cloud for all your data & all your users. Learn more about our purpose-built SQL cloud data warehouse.