Apache Kafka in Data Engineering

Pravin Maleya — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 17:34:08 +0000

Introduction

Apache Kafka is an open-source, distributed event streaming platform designed for high performance data pipelines, streaming analytics and data integration. Think of it as a high speed message hub for your data. It lets applications publish, store and subscribe to streams of records in real-time.

Key concepts in Kafka

1. Producer

An application that sends messages to Kafka topics.

2. Consumer

An application that reads messages from Kafka topics.

3. Topic

A category or feed name to which records are sent. Think of this as a channel.

4. Broker

A Kafka server. Multiple brokers form a Kafka cluster.

5. Kafka Cluster

A group of Kafka brokers working together.

Kafka Use case

Imagine an e-commerce platform:

Producers - Checkout service, inventory services, payment gateway.
Kafka - Handles all events.
Consumers - Analytics dashboards, fraud detection systems and email notifications.

Conclusion

Apache Kafka is a backbone for real-time data streaming.

DEV Community: Pravin Maleya

Apache Kafka in Data Engineering

Introduction

Key concepts in Kafka

Kafka Use case

Conclusion