Apache Kafka Use cases | Kafka Applications

In our last Kafka tutorial, we discussed Kafka Pros and Cons. Today, in this Kafka article, we will discuss Apache Kafka Use Cases and Kafka Applications. Kafka is one of the key technologies in the new data stack, and over the last few years, there is a huge developer interest in the usage of Kafka.

Although, if you don’t know about Kafka, it is a highly scalable publish-subscribe messaging system. Also, there are several Kafka Use cases and Kafka Applications all around.

So, let’s discuss the Kafka Use Cases and Application of Apache Kafka one by one.

Apache Kafka Use Cases and Applications

Let’s discuss Kafka Use cases:

i. Kafka Use cases

There are many Use Cases of Apache Kafka. So, here we are listing some of the most common use cases of it−

Kafka Use Cases

a. Kafka Messaging

As we know, Kafka is a distributed publish-subscribe messaging system. So, for a more traditional message broker, Kafka works well as a replacement. For a variety of reasons, we use Message brokers.

For example, to decouple processing from data producers, to buffer unprocessed messages and many more.

However, Kafka has better throughput, built-in partitioning, replication, and fault-tolerance, in comparison to most other messaging systems. That makes it a good solution for large-scale message processing applications.

b. Website Activity Tracking

To be able to rebuild a user activity tracking pipeline as a set of real-time publish-subscribe feeds, it is the original Use Case for Kafka. T

hat implies site activity is published to central topics with one topic per activity type. Here, site activity refers to page views, searches, or other actions users may take.

c. Kafka Metrics

For operational monitoring data, Kafka is often used. In addition, to produce centralized feeds of operational data, it includes aggregating statistics from distributed applications.

d. Kafka Log Aggregation

In order to collect logs from multiple services and make them available in a standard format to multiple consumers, we can use Kafka across an organization.

e. Stream Processing

However, there are some popular frameworks which read data from a topic, processes it, and write processed data to a new topic, where it becomes available for users and applications, such as Storm and Spark Streaming.

In the context of stream processing, Kafka’s strong durability is also very useful.

f. Kafka Event Sourcing

Basically, when state changes are logged as a time-ordered sequence of records, then event sourcing is a style of application design. Also, we can say Kafka is an excellent backend for an application built in this style. Because it supports for a very large stored log.

g. Commit Log

While it comes to a distributed system, Kafka can serve as a kind of external commit-log for it. Generally, it replicates data between nodes. Also, acts as a re-syncing mechanism for failed nodes to restore their data.

The feature of log compaction in Kafka helps to support this usage. However, Kafka is the same as Apache BookKeeper project, in this usage.

Now, let’s move towards Kafka Applications.

ii. Apache Kafka Applications

Kafka Applications

Kafka supports many of today’s best industrial applications. So, here we are listing some of the most notable applications of Kafka:

a. Twitter

Twitter is one of the best Kafka Applications. A famous online social networking service or a platform Twitter uses Kafka. Basically, it provides a way to send and receive users tweets.

Through this platform, registered users can read and post tweets, but unregistered users can only read tweets. However, it uses Storm-Kafka as a part of their stream processing infrastructure.

b. LinkedIn

Another Kafka Application is LinkedIn. For activity stream data and operational metrics, LinkedIn uses Apache Kafka.

There are several products like LinkedIn Newsfeed, LinkedIn Today, for online message consumption and in addition to offline analytics systems like Hadoop, Kafka messaging system helps LinkedIn.

Moreover, we can say the strong durability of Kafka is also one of the key factors in connection with LinkedIn.

c. Netflix

An American multinational provider of on-demand internet streaming media, Netflix, also uses Kafka. Basically, for the purpose of real-time monitoring and event processing, it uses Kafka.

d. Mozilla

In 1998, members of Netscape created a free-software community, Mozilla. In order to collect performance and usage data from the end-users browser for projects like Telemetry, Test Pilot, etc. Kafka will soon be replacing a part of Mozilla current production system.

e. Oracle

Basically, from its Enterprise Service Bus product called OSB (Oracle Service Bus), Oracle offers native connectivity to Kafka. In order, to implement staged data pipelines, that permits developers to leverage OSB built-in mediation capabilities.

So, this was all about Kafka Use Cases and Applications of Kafka. Hope you like our explanation.

Conclusion

Hence, we have seen several Kafka Use Cases as well as applications of Apache Kafka. However, if any doubt occurs regarding Kafka Use Cases and Applications, feel free to ask in the comment section.