Introducing the Kafka Consumer: Getting Started with the New Apache Kafka 0.9 Consumer Client | Confluent

What this post added

Introduces the new Apache Kafka 0.9 consumer client, detailing its advantages over the previous Scala clients: a clean consolidated API, reduced dependencies (pure Java, no Zookeeper), and better security support. It explains the new group coordination protocol built into Kafka, which replaces Zookeeper for group management and simplifies cross-language client development. The post covers core concepts like partitions, consumer groups, offsets, rebalancing, and the high watermark, and provides a tutorial on basic usage, configuration, topic subscription, and the poll loop.