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Share group

As explained in Apache Kafka in Action

A share group is a Kafka consumption pattern in which multiple consumers can cooperatively consume records from the same partition.

A share group lets multiple consumers cooperatively consume records from the same partition. It suits relatively slow consumers that need queue-like behavior without over-partitioning a topic for parallelism. section 6.1.2

Use the pattern with these trade-offs in mind:

  • Expect more consumers than partitions to be possible, reducing pressure to create extra partitions solely for parallelism. section 6.1.2
  • Do not depend on strict ordering within a shared partition: multiple consumers can pull records from it. section 6.1.2
  • Prefer traditional consumer groups for high-throughput workloads or any processing that requires partition ordering. section 6.1.2

How Apache Kafka in Action covers it

How deep it goes
Defines cooperative consumption and its scaling benefit, then stops short of implementation details and operational configuration.
Examples
Uses relatively slow consumers and queue-like workloads as the motivating scenario.
What it assumes
Assumes familiarity with Kafka topics, partitions, consumers, and traditional consumer groups.
What you can do after
Evaluate whether cooperative consumption fits workloads that prioritize flexible scaling over strict partition ordering.
How it connects
Connects partitions, consumers, consumer groups, throughput, parallelism, and ordering.
Cover of Apache Kafka in Action
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Related concepts

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