Multi-Threaded Messaging with the Apache Kafka Consumer

This post details the motivation and implementation of a multi-threaded Kafka consumer architecture. It explains the limitations of the single-threaded 'thread per consumer' model, particularly concerning slow processing times and exception handling, and proposes a solution that decouples consumption from processing using a thread pool. Key considerations for maintaining at-least-once delivery semantics and per-partition processing order are discussed, along with the implications of consumer group rebalancing.