Confluent Developer ft. Tim Berglund, Adi Polak & Viktor Gamov

As developers, we are good at envisioning the future state of any given system we want to build, but are we as good at telling the business how those changes positively impact the bottom line? 

Lyndon Hedderly (Team Lead, Business Value Consulting, Confluent) describes his approach to business value, how to justify a new technology that you’re introducing to your company, and tips on adopting new technologies and processes effectively. 

As Lyndon walks through each part of the business value framework: (1) baseline, (2) target state, (3) quantified benefits, (4) unquantified benefits, and (5) proof points, you’ll learn about cost effectiveness with Confluent Cloud, how to measure ROI vs. TCO, and a retail example from a customer that details their implementation of an event streaming platform.

EPISODE LINKS

• Measuring the Cost Effectiveness of Confluent Cloud 
• Measuring TCO: Apache Kafka vs. Confluent Cloud’s Managed Service 
• Get a Free TCO Assessment
• Join the Confluent Community Slack
• Learn more with Kafka tutorials, resources, and guides at Confluent Developer
• Use 60PDCAST to get an additional $60 of free Confluent Cloud usage*

SEASON 2
Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov
Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed
Music by Coastal Kites 
Artwork by Phil Vo 

•  🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. 
• ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes.
• 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 
• 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.

Inventory management systems are crucial for reducing real-time inventory data drift, improving customer experience, and minimizing out-of-stock events. Apache Kafka®’s real-time data technology provides seamless inventory tracking at scale, saving billions of dollars in the supply chain, making modernized data architectures more important to retailers now more than ever.  

In this episode, we’ll discuss how Apache Kafka allows the implementation of stateful event streaming architectures on a cloud-native platform for application and architecture modernization. 

Sina Sojoodi (Global CTO, Data and Architecture, VMware) and Rohit Kelapure (Principal Advisor, VMware) will discuss data modeling, as well as the architecture design needed to achieve data consistency and correctness while handling the scale and resilience needs of a major retailer in near real time. 

The implemented solution utilizes Spring Boot, Kafka Streams, and Apache Cassandra, and they explain the process of using several services to write to Cassandra instead of trying to use Kafka as a distributed log for enforcing consistency.  

EPISODE LINKS

• How to Run Kafka Streams on Kubernetes ft. Viktor Gamov
• Machine Learning with Kafka Streams, Kafka Connect, and ksqlDB ft. Kai Waehner
• Understand What’s Flying Above You with Kafka Streams ft. Neil Buesing
• Join the Confluent Community Slack
• Learn more with Kafka tutorials, resources, and guides at Confluent Developer
• Use 60PDCAST to get an additional $60 of free Confluent Cloud usage*

SEASON 2
Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov
Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed
Music by Coastal Kites 
Artwork by Phil Vo 

•  🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. 
• ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes.
• 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 
• 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.

Apache Kafka® Committer and PMC member Matthias J. Sax explains fault tolerance, high-availability stream processing, and how it’s done in Kafka Streams. He discusses the differences between changelogging vs. checkpointing and the complexities checkpointing introduces. From there, Matthias explains what hot standbys are and how they are used in Kafka Streams, why Kafka Streams doesn’t do watermarking, and finally, why Kafka Streams is a library and not infrastructure. 

EPISODE LINKS

• Ask Confluent #7: Kafka Consumers and Streams Failover Explained ft. Matthias Sax
• Ask Confluent #8: Guozhang Wang on Kafka Streams Standby Tasks
• How to Run Kafka Streams on Kubernetes ft. Viktor Gamov
• Kafka Streams Interactive Queries Go Prime Time
• Highly Available, Fault-Tolerant Pull Queries in ksqlDB
• KIP-535: Allow state stores to serve stale reads during rebalance
• KIP-562: Allow fetching a key from a single partition rather than iterating over all the stores on an instance
• KIP-441: Smooth Scaling Out for Kafka Streams Skip to end of metadata
• Join the Confluent Community Slack
• Learn more with Kafka tutorials, resources, and guides at Confluent Developer
• Use 60PDCAST to get an additional $60 of free Confluent Cloud usage*

SEASON 2
Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov
Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed
Music by Coastal Kites 
Artwork by Phil Vo 

•  🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. 
• ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes.
• 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 
• 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.

Real-time stock trades, GPS location, and website click tracking are just a few industries that heavily rely on Apache Kafka®'s real-time messaging and data delivery functions. As such, Kafka's latency is incredibly important.

Anna Povzner (Software Engineer, Confluent) gives you the breakdown and everything you need to know when it comes to measuring latency. 

The five components of latency are produce time, publish time, commit time, catch-up time, and fetch time. When consumer pulling adds to latency, Anna shares some best practices to keep in mind for how to think about partitioning in conjunction with latency. She also discusses client configuration in the cloud, interesting problems she's helped solve for customers, and her top two tips for debugging latency. 

EPISODE LINKS

• 99th Percentile Latency at Scale with Apache Kafka
• Benchmark Your Dedicated Apache Kafka Cluster on Confluent Cloud
• Distributed Systems Engineering with Apache Kafka ft. Gwen Shapira
• Join the Confluent Community Slack
• Learn more with Kafka tutorials, resources, and guides at Confluent Developer
• Use 60PDCAST to get an additional $60 of free Confluent Cloud usage*

SEASON 2
Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov
Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed
Music by Coastal Kites 
Artwork by Phil Vo 

•  🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. 
• ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes.
• 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 
• 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.

What started out as a consulting company, Camunda eventually turned into a developer-friendly, open source vendor that now focuses on workflow automation. 

Bernd Ruecker, a co-founder and the chief technologist at Camunda, talks through the company's journey, how he ended up in open source, and all things automation, including how it differs from business process management and the issue of diagrams. 

Bernd also dives into dead letter topics in Apache Kafka®, software interacting with software, orchestration tension, and best practices for approaching challenges that pop up along the way. This episode will take you through a thorough introduction of Camunda Cloud, a cloud-native workflow engine, as well as Camunda’s Kafka connector. 

EPISODE LINKS

• Jay Kreps, Confluent | Kafka Summit SF 2019 Keynote ft. Dev Tagare, Lyft
• zeebe.io
• Join the Confluent Community Slack
• Learn more with Kafka tutorials, resources, and guides at Confluent Developer
• Use 60PDCAST to get an additional $60 of free Confluent Cloud usage*

SEASON 2
Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov
Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed
Music by Coastal Kites 
Artwork by Phil Vo 

•  🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. 
• ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes.
• 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 
• 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.

We've all been affected by COVID-19 in one way or another, resulting in big changes in workplace functionality, productivity, and even our relationships within the Apache Kafka® and Confluent communities as meetings and events have needed to turn virtual. 

Ale Murray (Global Community Manager, Confluent) shares interesting trends, changes in community metrics, and what we’ve done to adapt as a response. Ale also explains what makes a comprehensive community program and the value of community meetups in light of the pandemic. 

Despite how much we miss in-person interactions, by digitizing events and focusing on the community, we saw great growth in attendance and engagement across our Slack community, online hackathons, MVP program, and online meetups over the last couple of months, proving that nothing can stop this amazing community from thriving.

EPISODE LINKS

• Get involved with the Confluent Community
• Join the Confluent Community Slack
• Learn more with Kafka tutorials, resources, and guides at Confluent Developer
• Use 60PDCAST to get an additional $60 of free Confluent Cloud usage*

SEASON 2
Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov
Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed
Music by Coastal Kites 
Artwork by Phil Vo 

•  🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. 
• ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes.
• 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 
• 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.

Author Sam Newman catches up with Tim Berglund (Senior Director of Developer Advocacy, Confluent) in the virtual studio on what microservices are, how they work, the drawbacks of microservices, what splitting the monolith looks like, and patterns to look for. 

The pair talk through Sam's book “Monolith to Microservices” chapter by chapter, looking at key components of microservices in more detail. Sam also walks through database decomposition, integrating with new technology, and performing joins in event streaming architecture. Lastly, Sam shares what he’s excited for in the future, which includes “Monolith to Microservices Volume II.”

EPISODE LINKS

• Monolith to Microservices
• Join the Confluent Community Slack
• Learn more with Kafka tutorials, resources, and guides at Confluent Developer
• Use 60PDCAST to get an additional $60 of free Confluent Cloud usage* 

SEASON 2
Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov
Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed
Music by Coastal Kites 
Artwork by Phil Vo 

•  🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. 
• ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes.
• 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 
• 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.

Tim Baldridge (Senior Software Engineer, Cisco) joins us on Streaming Audio to talk about event streaming, stream processing use cases, and µKanren. 

First, Tim shares about his work at Cisco related to intaking viruses, the backend, and finding new ways to process data. Later, Tim talks about interesting bank and airline use cases, as well as his time at Walmart, taking a closer look at specific retail use cases and the product that Walmart used to process data streams. 

If you’re curious about what µKanren is, how it relates to relational programming, the complex math that goes into the workflow of µKanren, and how Apache Kafka® holds up to all other event streaming platforms, Tim also dives into that too. 

EPISODE LINKS

• µKanren: A Minimal Functional Core for Relational Programming
• It's Actors All The Way Down  
• Den of Clojure Build Your Own Logic Engine
• Join the Confluent Community Slack
• Learn more with Kafka tutorials, resources, and guides at Confluent Developer

SEASON 2
Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov
Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed
Music by Coastal Kites 
Artwork by Phil Vo 

•  🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. 
• ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes.
• 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 
• 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.

Confluent Platform 5.5 introduces long-awaited JSON Schema and Protobuf support in Confluent Schema Registry and across other platform components. 

Support for Protobuf and JSON Schema in Schema Registry provides the same assurances of data compatibility and consistency we already had with Avro, while opening up Kafka to more businesses, applications, and use cases that are built upon those data serialization formats. 

Tushar Thole (Engineering Leader, Confluent) and David Araujo (Product Manager, Confluent) share about these new improvements to Confluent Schema Registry, the differences between Apache Avro™, Protobuf, and JSON Schemas, how to treat optional fields, some of the arguments between Avro and Protobuf, and why it took some time for Schema Registry to support JSON Schemas and Protobuf.

Later, they talk about custom plugins, adding another layer of safety in Confluent Platform 5.5, and their vision for data governance.

EPISODE LINKS

• Introducing Confluent Platform 5.5
• Confluent Platform Now Supports Protobuf, JSON Schema, and Custom Formats
• Download Confluent Platform
• Getting Started with Protobuf in Confluent Cloud
• Read articles by Robert Yokota 
• Schema Validation with Confluent Platform 5.4 
• Playing Chess with Confluent Schema Registry
• JSON Schema specs
• Send feedback to [email protected]
• Fully managed Apache Kafka as a service! Try free.
• Join the Confluent Community Slack
• Learn more with Kafka tutorials, resources, and guides at Confluent Developer

SEASON 2
Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov
Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed
Music by Coastal Kites 
Artwork by Phil Vo 

•  🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. 
• ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes.
• 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 
• 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.

Apache Kafka® is a powerful toolset for microservice architectures. In this podcast, we’ll cover how Boden, an online retail company that specializes in high-end fashion linked to the royal family, used streaming microservices to modernize their business. 

Matt Simpson (Solutions Architect, Boden) shares a real life use case showing how Kafka has helped Boden digitize their business, transitioning from catalogs to online sales, tracking stock, and identifying buying patterns. Matt also shares about what he's learned through using Kafka as well as the challenges of being a product master. And lastly, what is Matt excited for for the future of Boden? Find out in this episode!

EPISODE LINKS

• Digital Transformation in Style: How Boden Innovates Retail Using Apache Kafka
• Learn about Boden
• ETL and Event Streaming Explained ft. Stewart Bryson
• Connecting Snowflake and Apache Kafka ft. Isaac Kunen
• Instagram for Kensington Palace
• Join the Confluent Community Slack
• Learn more with Kafka tutorials, resources, and guides at Confluent Developer

SEASON 2
Hosted by Tim Berglund, Adi Polak and Viktor Gamov
Produced and Edited by Noelle Gallagher, Peter Furia and Nurie Mohamed
Music by Coastal Kites 
Artwork by Phil Vo 

•  🎧 Subscribe to Confluent Developer wherever you listen to podcasts. 
• ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube, and hit the 🔔 to catch new episodes.
• 👍 If you enjoyed this, please leave us a rating. 
• 🎧 Confluent also has a podcast for tech leaders: "Life Is But A Stream" hosted by our friend, Joseph Morais.