Docs /Integrations /Apache Flink /Operations /DQL /Time Travel

Time Travel¶

The Lance Flink connector supports reading historical versions of a dataset via time-travel options, resolved uniformly through LanceOpener.

Options¶

Option	Type	Description
`read.version`	LONG	Read the given dataset version (highest precedence)
`read.as-of-timestamp`	STRING	Read as of an ISO-8601 timestamp; resolves to the newest version whose creation time is ≤ the timestamp

When both are set, read.version takes precedence.

Examples¶

-- Read a specific version
SELECT * FROM lance_table /*+ OPTIONS('read.version' = '3') */;

-- Read as of a timestamp (resolves to the newest version <= the timestamp)
SELECT * FROM lance_table /*+ OPTIONS('read.as-of-timestamp' = '2026-07-01T00:00:00Z') */;

Declaratively on the table DDL:

CREATE TABLE lance_table (
    id BIGINT,
    content STRING
) WITH (
    'connector' = 'lance',
    'path' = '/data/vectors',
    'read.version' = '3'
);

Semantics¶

read.version opens exactly that version.
read.as-of-timestamp accepts any string parseable by Instant.parse, OffsetDateTime.parse, or ZonedDateTime.parse; a bare yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss is assumed UTC.
A timestamp predating the oldest version raises a clear error.
Time travel is read-only: write.mode = overwrite replaces the dataset with a new version, so earlier versions stay reachable until Lance garbage-collects them.

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