index.md

---
title: "Overview"
---
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This documentation is for Apache Flink version {{ site.version }}, which is the
current development version of the next upcoming major release of Apache Flink.

Apache Flink is an open source platform for distributed stream and batch data processing. Flink’s core is
a streaming dataflow engine that provides data distribution, communication, and fault tolerance for distributed
computations over data streams. Flink also builds batch processing on top of the streaming engine, overlaying
native iteration support, managed memory, and program optimization.

If you want to write your first program, look at one of the available quickstarts, and refer to the
[DataSet API guide](apis/batch/index.html) or the [DataStream API guide](apis/streaming/index.html).

## Stack

This is an overview of Flink's stack. Click on any component to go to the respective documentation page.

<img src="fig/overview-stack-0.9.png" width="893" height="450" alt="Stack" usemap="#overview-stack">

<map name="overview-stack">
  <area shape="rect" coords="188,0,263,200" alt="Graph API: Gelly" href="libs/gelly_guide.html">
  <area shape="rect" coords="268,0,343,200" alt="Flink ML" href="libs/ml/">
  <area shape="rect" coords="348,0,423,200" alt="Table" href="libs/table.html">

  <area shape="rect" coords="188,205,538,260" alt="DataSet API (Java/Scala)" href="apis/batch/index.html">
  <area shape="rect" coords="543,205,893,260" alt="DataStream API (Java/Scala)" href="apis/streaming/index.html">

  <!-- <area shape="rect" coords="188,275,538,330" alt="Optimizer" href="optimizer.html"> -->
  <!-- <area shape="rect" coords="543,275,893,330" alt="Stream Builder" href="streambuilder.html"> -->

  <area shape="rect" coords="188,335,893,385" alt="Flink Runtime" href="internals/general_arch.html">

  <area shape="rect" coords="188,405,328,455" alt="Local" href="apis/local_execution.html">
  <area shape="rect" coords="333,405,473,455" alt="Remote" href="apis/cluster_execution.html">
  <area shape="rect" coords="478,405,638,455" alt="Embedded" href="apis/local_execution.html">
  <area shape="rect" coords="643,405,765,455" alt="YARN" href="setup/yarn_setup.html">
</map>