Tink: a temporal graph analytics library for Apache Flink

We introduce the Tink library for distributed temporal graph analytics. Increasingly, reasoning about temporal aspects of graph-structured data collections is an important aspect of analytics. For example, in a communication network, time plays a fundamental role in the propagation of information within the network. Whereas existing tools for temporal graph analysis are built stand alone, Tink is a library in the Apache Flink ecosystem, thereby leveraging its advanced mature features such as distributed processing and query optimization. Furthermore, Flink requires little effort to process and clean the data without having to use different tools before analyzing the data. Tink focuses on interval graphs in which every edge is associated with a starting time and an ending time. The library provides facilities for temporal graph creation and maintenance, as well as standard temporal graph measures and algorithms. Furthermore, the library is designed for ease of use and extensibility.