Kafka is a distributed stream processing system that is commonly used for storing large volumes of append-only event data. Kafka has been open source for almost a decade, and as the project has matured, it has been used for new kinds of applications. 

Kafka’s pubsub interface for writing and reading topics is not ideal for all of these applications, which has led to the creation of ksqlDB, a database system built for streaming applications that uses Kafka as the underlying infrastructure for storing data.

Michael Drogalis is a principal product manager at Confluent, where he helped develop ksqlDB. Michael joins the show to discuss ksqlDB, including the architecture, the query semantics, and the applications which might want a database that focuses on streams. We have done many great shows on Kafka in the past, which you can find on SoftwareDaily.com. Also, if you are interested in writing about Kafka, we have a new writing feature that you can check out by going to SoftwareDaily.com/write.