Integration / Apache Kafka Interview questions
List the core APIs provided by Kafka?
Kafka exposes five main client-facing APIs, each targeting a different way of interacting with the platform.
| API | Purpose |
| Producer API | Publish records to topics. |
| Consumer API | Subscribe to and read records from topics. |
| Streams API | Build stream-processing applications (filter, join, aggregate) directly on Kafka data. |
| Connect API | Move data between Kafka and external systems (databases, cloud storage) using pre-built connectors, without hand-writing producer/consumer code. |
| Admin API | Programmatically manage topics, ACLs, configs, and cluster metadata. |
Most applications only need the Producer and Consumer APIs directly; Streams and Connect exist specifically to avoid writing that lower-level client code by hand for common patterns like transforming data in-flight or syncing with a database.
Which Kafka API is used to move data between Kafka and an external database without hand-writing producer/consumer code?
Which API would you use to programmatically create a new topic or manage ACLs?
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