Introducing a Modern SQL Experience in Apache Beam - Beam Summit 2026

Presented by Ahmed Abualsaud at Beam Summit 2026. For a long time, Beam SQL lagged behind other frameworks like Spark or Flink because it lacked support for any hierarchical metadata management. This point of friction limited Beam SQL’s interoperability, scalability, and ease of use within modern data architectures. No more! In this session, we’ll dive into the evolution of the Beam SQL story, introducing: - A New Catalog and Database Hierarchy, enabling centralized metadata management and data environment segregation - Seamless Cross-Catalog Queries, allowing joins and data movement across different catalogs and databases with ease - Standardized DDL Support (CREATE, SHOW, ALTER, DROP, USE), bringing Beam in line with the industry-standard SQL experience We’ll end with a demo in a multi-catalog environment, demonstrating how these new features allow for a more intuitive, powerful, and ""SQL-native"" developer workflow in Beam.