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This documentation is for Apache Flink version {{ site.version }}. These pages have been built at: {% build_time %}.

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.

## First Steps

- **Concepts**: Start with the basic concepts of Flink's [Dataflow Programming Model](concepts/programming-model.html) and [Distributed Runtime Environment](concepts/runtime.html). This will help you to fully understand the other parts of the documentation, including the setup and programming guides. It is highly recommended to read these sections first.

- **Quickstarts**: [Run an example program](quickstart/setup_quickstart.html) on your local machine or [write a simple program](quickstart/run_example_quickstart.html) working on live Wikipedia edits.

- **Programming Guides**: You can check out our guides about [basic concepts](dev/api_concepts.html) and the [DataStream API](dev/datastream_api.html) or [DataSet API](dev/batch/index.html) to learn how to write your first Flink programs.

## Migration Guide

For users of earlier versions of Apache Flink we recommend the [API migration guide](dev/migration.html).
While all parts of the API that were marked as public and stable are still supported (the public API is backwards compatible), we suggest migrating applications to the
newer interfaces where applicable.

For users that plan to upgrade a Flink system in production, we recommend reading the guide on [upgrading Apache Flink](ops/upgrading.html).