Kafka Streams

Overview

Kafka Streams is a client library for building real-time streaming applications. This skill should be invoked when building real-time data processing pipelines, event processing systems, or stream transformations.

Core Principles

• Stream Processing: Process data in real-time as it arrives
• Topology: Define source, processor, and sink operations
• State Management: Handle stateful operations with state stores
• Windowing: Process data in time windows for aggregations

Preparation Checklist

• Set up Kafka cluster
• Define input and output topics
• Plan processing topology
• Choose state management approach