preface

After completing the first edition of Kafka Streams in Action, I thought I had accomplished everything I set out to do. But as time went on, my understanding of the Kafka ecosystem and my appreciation for Kafka Streams grew. I saw that Kafka Streams was more powerful than I had initially thought. Additionally, I noticed other important pieces in building event-streaming applications; Kafka Streams is still a key player but not the only requirement. I realized that Apache Kafka could be considered the central nervous system for an organization’s data. If Kafka is the central nervous system, then Kafka Streams is a vital organ performing some necessary operations.