Front matter
Beginning with its first release in 2011, Apache Kafka® has helped create a new category of data-in-motion systems, and it’s now the foundation of countless modern event-driven applications. This book, Kafka in Action, written by Dylan Scott, Viktor Gamov, and Dave Klein, equips you with the skills to design and implement event-based applications built on Apache Kafka. The authors have had many years of real-world experience using Kafka, and this book’s on-the-ground feel really sets it apart.
Let’s take a moment to ask the question, “Why do we need Kafka in the first place?” Historically, most applications were built on data-at-rest systems. When some interesting events happened in the world, they were stored in these systems immediately, but the utilization of those events happened later, either when the user explicitly asked for the information, or from some batch-processing jobs that would eventually kick in.