is it possible to query an existing StreamTable externally, without uploading a .jar get the execution environment and retrieve the table environment? I had waited for Apache Flink Table 1.4 release, because of its dynamic (continuous) table features. I expected something else, I thought it would be possible to alter the table at runtime and modify its parameters. In order to do some live queries, instead of defining (continuous or append-only) database views on top of a data stream. I know I could export my table into some database and query this database dynamically using SQL, but this is kind of awkward behavior. The beauty of Flink is that everything is in real-time and everything is a stream, so is it possible to query a Flink table in real time from some external program?
No, this is not supported at the moment.
There has been some work on storing the result table of a streaming query as queryable state. This would allow for point (key look-up) queries on a fixed key attribute. This feature might become available with Flink 1.5.
There are not concrete plans to support SQL queries on a dynamic table produced by a streaming SQL (or Table API) query. You would have to emit the table to a RDBMS and query the data from there.