Glossary

Kafka

A distributed, append-only commit log for high-throughput event streams.

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Definition

A distributed, append-only commit log for high-throughput event streams.

How it works

Topics split into partitions (the unit of ordering + parallelism), replicated for durability. Consumers track their own offset, so they can replay history.

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Distributed Log (Kafka) — Library

Common questions

What is Kafka?

A distributed, append-only commit log for high-throughput event streams.

How does Kafka work?

Topics split into partitions (the unit of ordering + parallelism), replicated for durability. Consumers track their own offset, so they can replay history.

What is Kafka used for in system design?

Topics split into partitions (the unit of ordering + parallelism), replicated for durability. Consumers track their own offset, so they can replay history.

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