Flink SQL Quick Start with Confluent Cloud Console

This quick start gets you up and running with Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink®. The following steps show how to create a workspace for running SQL statements on streaming data.

In this quick start guide, you perform the following steps:

Step 1: Create a workspace
Step 2: Run SQL statements
Step 3: Query streaming data
Step 4: Query existing topics (optional)

Prerequisites

Access to Confluent Cloud.

Step 1: Create a workspace

Workspaces provide an intuitive, flexible UI for dynamically exploring and interacting with all of your data on Confluent Cloud using Flink SQL. In a workspace, you can save your queries, run multiple queries simultaneously in a single view, and browse your catalogs, databases, and tables.

Log in to Confluent Cloud Console at https://confluent.cloud/login.
The Home page opens.
In the navigation menu, click SQL workspaces to open the workspaces page.
Click Create workspace to open the New workspace page.
Click Create new workspace, and in the dialog, select the cloud provider and region. If you have Kafka topics that you want to run SQL queries on, select the region that has your Kafka cluster.
Click Create workspace.
A new workspace opens with an example query in the code editor, or cell.
If default compute pools are enabled, or if you have the FlinkAdmin role, Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink creates a compute pool, which represents the compute resources that run your SQL statements. All statements that use a compute pool share its resources, enabling you to limit or guarantee resources as your use cases require. A compute pool is bound to a region, and creating compute pools has no cost.
You can change the compute pool where a workspace runs by clicking the workspace settings icon and choosing from the Compute pool selection dropdown.

Step 2: Run SQL statements

In the cell of the new workspace, you can start running SQL statements.

Click Run.
Confluent Cloud submits the example statement and shows information about it, including its status and a unique identifier. Click the Statement name link to open the statement details view, which shows the statement status and other information. Click X to dismiss the details view.
After an initialization period, the query results display beneath the cell.
Your output should resemble:
```
EXPR$0
0
1
2
```
Copy the following SQL and paste it into the cell. The statement runs the CURRENT_TIMESTAMP function, which is one of many built-in functions provided by Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink.
```
SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP;
```
Click Run.
The cell shows the statement result. Your output should resemble:
```
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
2026-02-10 11:25:09.903
```

Step 3: Query streaming data

Flink SQL enables using familiar SQL syntax to query streaming data. Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink provides example data streams that you can experiment with. In this step, you query the orders table from the marketplace database in the examples catalog.

In Flink SQL, the catalog and database scope catalog objects, like tables.

A catalog is a collection of databases that share the same namespace.
A database is a collection of tables that share the same namespace.

In Confluent Cloud, an environment maps to a Flink catalog, and a Kafka cluster maps to a Flink database.

You can always use three-part identifiers for your tables, like catalog.database.table, but it’s more convenient to set a default.

Set the default catalog and database by using the Use catalog and Use database dropdown menus in the top-right corner of the workspace. Select examples for the catalog, and marketplace for the database.

Click to create a new cell, and run the following statement to list all the tables in the marketplace database.
```
SHOW TABLES;
```
Your output should resemble:
```
Table Name
clicks
customers
orders
products
```

Run the following statement to inspect the orders data stream.

SELECT * FROM orders;

Your output should resemble:

order_id                             customer_id product_id price
36d77b21-e68f-4123-b87a-cc19ac1f36ac 3137        1305       65.71
7fd3cd2a-392b-4f8f-b953-0bfa1d331354 3063        1327       17.75
1a223c61-38a5-4b8c-8465-2a6b359bf05e 3064        1166       14.95
...

Click Stop to end the query.

Step 4: Query existing topics (optional)

If you’ve created the workspace in a region where you already have Kafka clusters and topics, you can explore this data with Flink SQL. Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink automatically registers Flink tables on your topics, so you can run statements on your streaming data.

Set the default catalog and database by using the Use catalog and Use database dropdown menus. You can find your catalogs and databases in the navigation menu of the workspace.
Click to create a new cell, and run the following statement to list all the tables in the database that you selected as the default.
```
SHOW TABLES;
```
You can browse any of your tables by running a SELECT statement.
```
SELECT * FROM <table_name>;
```