The Simplest Useful Kafka Connect Data Pipeline in the World – Part 1

What this post added

This post introduces the Kafka Connect framework and demonstrates building a simple, no-code data pipeline. It details the use of the JDBC Source connector to ingest data from a MySQL database into Kafka, leveraging timestamp columns for change detection. The pipeline then streams this data to both a flat file and Elasticsearch. It highlights the distributed mode of Kafka Connect for scalability and ease of migration, and provides practical steps for setting up the MySQL database, configuring the JDBC connector, and verifying data flow using the Avro console consumer. It also touches upon the use of Kafka Connect offsets for tracking processed data.