Sophie Blee-Goldman
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ableegoldman.bsky.social
Sophie Blee-Goldman
@ableegoldman.bsky.social
Apache Kafka PMC/committer, Founding Engineer at Responsive, Kafka Streams dev/fan, otter advocate. My debugging rubber duck is a 5 ft giraffe, please refer any questions to him
Next up in the Kafka Streams 101 series: performance optimization!

Admittedly this one goes way beyond just the "101" level, with general tips to incredibly specific optimization techniques.

Check it out to get a handle on your application's performance: bit.ly/43zXoQM
Kafka Streams 101: Optimizing your apps for maximum performance
Learn the concepts, configs, and application design strategies to get your Kafka Streams apps running as optimally as possible.
bit.ly
March 11, 2025 at 1:19 AM
Next entry in the Kafka Streams 101 series: application lifecycle.

Very beginner friendly, but even the pros might find a useful tip or two -- for example: have you heard of the new standby task listener?

Check it out: www.responsive.dev/blog/app-lif...
Kafka Streams 101: Application Lifecycle
Learn how to properly start, stop, and manage the lifecycle of Kafka Streams
www.responsive.dev
February 26, 2025 at 10:04 PM
I like to think the capybara would be friends with an otter if it ever met one though
February 26, 2025 at 10:00 PM
We're keeping the ball rolling on the Kafka Streams 101 series with yet another blog post! This time the focus is on configuration, and breaking down the most important configs to focus on for various needs (such as correctness, resiliency, etc)

Check it out here: www.responsive.dev/blog/importa...
Kafka Streams 101: The Most Important Configs
Learn which configurations are most critical for a reliable and efficient deployment
www.responsive.dev
February 18, 2025 at 10:40 PM
By the way, we're integrating this into our Kafka Streams 101 series, so if this speaks to you poke around the curriculum for other things that interest you and subscribe to get notified when new lessons comes out: www.responsive.dev/resources/ka...
Kafka Streams 101 | Responsive
Learn to build bulletproof Kafka Streams applications
www.responsive.dev
February 13, 2025 at 7:31 PM
The 2025 blog post series has begun and we're kicking things off with the "official" Kafka Streams upgrade-guide -- check it out for best practices when setting up a new app, rules for safe vs unsafe upgrades, and tips for making the process go smoothly: www.responsive.dev/blog/topolog...
Kafka Streams 101: Topology Upgrades
A Kafka Streams 101 lesson to learn how to identify unsafe changes to a topology and the techniques to mitigate them
www.responsive.dev
February 13, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Thanks everyone for all the feedback on blog post ideas! Performance and upgrades were most popular so stay tuned for these deep dives - for beginners and advanced users alike

Check out our new Kafka Streams 101 site and subscribe to get notified for these and other upcoming lessons! bit.ly/40LWJZL
Kafka Streams 101 | Responsive
Learn to build bulletproof Kafka Streams applications
bit.ly
February 4, 2025 at 2:42 AM
[5/5] And finally, links!

"Debugging Rebalances" -- Defense Against the Dark Arts of Rebalancing -- responsive.dev/blog/guide-t...

"EOS guide" -- Enter the Matrix: A practical guide to exactly-once semantics in Kafka Streams -- responsive.dev/blog/guide-t...

..and many more at responsive.dev/blog
Defense Against the Dark Arts of Rebalancing in Kafka Streams
For everyone who is in too deep and wants to peel back the curtains on one of the most elegant yet maddening aspects of Apache Kafka: the consumer group rebalancing protocol.
responsive.dev
January 15, 2025 at 3:29 AM
[4/5]
And if none of these resonate with you or there's something in particular you've always wanted to go deeper on that isn't listed here, feel free to respond in the thread or DM me.

Happy streaming!
January 15, 2025 at 3:29 AM
[3/5]
1. Understanding & optimizing performance
2. Processing semantics
3. Task assignment
4. Topology upgrades
5. Testing Kafka Streams
6. Topology design and architectural best practices
7. State management v2 (followup to www.responsive.dev/blog/guide-t...)
Don't Panic: The Definitive Guide to Kafka Streams State
A definitive guide to managing Kafka Streams state that covers some history, architecture concepts and many tips to prevent panic in the face of long restoration and rebalances.
www.responsive.dev
January 15, 2025 at 3:29 AM
[2/5] To that end I'd love to get feedback from you, the people actually using Kafka Streams, about which topics would be most helpful to touch on this year.

I have a few ideas already queued up so let me know which of these, if any, sound most interesting to you:
January 15, 2025 at 3:29 AM
[1/5] Hey fellow Kafka Streams otters! You may have already seen my previous blog posts such as the "Debugging Rebalances" and "EOS guide" from last year (and if you haven't, go check them out! Links in thread)

But now it's 2025, and time for me to think about what to write next...
January 15, 2025 at 3:29 AM
For any Kafka Streams fans out there who want to know what it's like scaling an EOS application up to multiple TB of state at ~10k+ records/s with minimal downtime -- make sure to catch the Q&A we're hosting tomorrow with Metronome.

Join us Dec 12th at 9:30am PST!

www.linkedin.com/events/72647...
Q&A: Scaling Event Driven Architectures with Metronome | LinkedIn
We're hosting a live Q&A session with two engineers who have seen it all: - Casey Crites, a founding engineer at Metronome, implemented and scaled the Kafka pipeline at Metronome from zero to where i...
www.linkedin.com
December 11, 2024 at 11:26 PM