An Introduction to Kafka
An Introduction to Kafka Originally published in Chinese on 2021-11-29; this English edition preserves the original scope and technical context. Overview Kafka was initially born to solve data pipeline issues at LinkedIn. Its design purpose is to provide a high-performance messaging system capable of handling various data types and delivering clean, structured user activity data and system metrics in real time. It is not merely a data storage system (such as traditional relational databases, key-value stores, search engines, or caching systems), but also a streaming system that continuously evolves and grows. Kafka is now widely used in real-time data stream processing for social networks. It serves as the foundation for the next-generation data architecture. Kafka is often compared to existing enterprise messaging systems, big data systems (such as Hadoop), and data integration ETL tools. ...