DATA ANALYTICS DATA ENGINEERING

Event-Driven Architecture: Building

Scalable Systems with Apache Kafka
Taniya Pan  Add comment  8 min read  August 2, 2024

In the ever-evolving world of software development, building systems that can

scale effortlessly is crucial. One of the architectural styles that has gained significant
traction for its ability to handle large volumes of data in real-time is Event-Driven
Architecture (EDA). In this blog, we will explore EDA in depth and demonstrate how
Apache Kafka, a distributed streaming platform, can be used to build scalable
systems.

Jump to 
What is Event-Driven Architecture?
Key Concepts
Benefits of EDA
EDA vs Traditional Architectures
Apache Kafka: A Look at the Basics

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 1 of 19
:
 Kafka Basics
Kafka Ecosystem
Use Cases
Setting Up Apache Kafka
Installation and Configuration
Configuration Details
Testing the Setup
Building a Producer Application
Producer Configuration
Advanced Producer Features
Building a Consumer Application
Consumer Configuration
Advanced Consumer Features
Stream Processing with Kafka Streams
Setting Up Kafka Streams
Writing a Kafka Streams Application
Monitoring and Managing Kafka
Logging and Alerting
Performance Tuning
Conclusion

What is Event-Driven Architecture?

Key Concepts
Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) revolves around the concept of events. An event is
a significant change in state that needs to be communicated within the system.
Here are some fundamental components:

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 2 of 19
:
 Events: Represent state changes or significant occurrences within the system.

Event Producers: Generate events. For example, a user registration form submitting
a new user event.

Event Consumers: Process events. For example, a notification service that sends a
welcome email upon receiving a new user event.

Event Channels: Mediums through which events are transmitted, such as message
brokers like Kafka.

Benefits of EDA
EDA offers several advantages:

Scalability: Systems can handle high volumes of data and scale out by adding
more consumers.
Decoupling: Producers and consumers are loosely coupled, making the
system more flexible and easier to maintain.
Real-Time Processing: Events are processed as they occur, enabling real-time
analytics and responses.
Responsiveness: Systems can react promptly to changes and new data.

EDA vs Traditional Architectures

Unlike traditional monolithic or SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) systems, EDA
doesn’t rely on direct communication between services. Instead, services interact
through events, allowing for better scalability and fault tolerance.

Apache Kafka: A Look at the Basics

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 3 of 19
:
 Kafka Basics
Apache Kafka is a distributed streaming platform designed for building real-time
data pipelines and streaming applications. Key components of Kafka include:

Topics: Categories to which records are published.

Partitions: Subdivisions of topics that help distribute the load.

Producers: Clients that publish events to Kafka topics.

Consumers: Clients that read events from Kafka topics.

Brokers: Kafka servers that manage the storage and retrieval of data.

Kafka Ecosystem
Kafka’s ecosystem includes several powerful tools:

Kafka Connect: For integrating Kafka with various data sources and sinks.

Kafka Streams: For building stream processing applications.

KSQL: A SQL-like interface for querying and processing data in Kafka.

Use Cases
Kafka is used in various industries:

Finance: Real-time fraud detection and transaction processing.

E-commerce: Tracking user activities and providing personalized recommendations.

IoT: Collecting and analyzing sensor data from connected devices.

Setting Up Apache Kafka

Installation and Configuration

Setting up Kafka involves a few steps. Here’s how to get Kafka running on your local
machine:

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 4 of 19
:
 bash

# Download Kafka

wget https://downloads.apache.org/kafka/2.7.0/kafka_2.13-2.7.0.tgz

tar -xzf kafka_2.13-2.7.0.tgz

cd kafka_2.13-2.7.0

# Start Zookeeper (Kafka’s dependency)

bin/zookeeper-server-start.sh config/zookeeper.properties

# Start Kafka Broker

bin/kafka-server-start.sh config/server.properties

Configuration Details 
 
Key configuration parameters include:

Broker ID: Unique identifier for each broker. Blog Home

Zookeeper Connect: Address of the Zookeeper instance managing Kafka.

Job Search

Log Directories: Directories where Kafka stores data. Job Interview Guides

Testing the Setup Software Engineering

Let’s create a topic and test our Kafka setup with a simple producer and consumer:

bash

# Create a topic

bin/kafka-topics.sh –create –topic test-topic –bootstrap-server localhost:9092 –

partitions 1 –replication-factor 1

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 5 of 19
:
 # Start a producer

bin/kafka-console-producer.sh –topic test-topic –bootstrap-server localhost:9092

# Start a consumer

bin/kafka-console-consumer.sh –topic test-topic –from-beginning –bootstrap-

server localhost:9092

After running these commands, you can type messages into the producer console,
and they should appear in the consumer console.

Building a Producer Application

Producer Configuration
Producers need to be configured with properties such as the Kafka broker address
and serializers for keys and values.

Writing the Producer Code

Here’s a simple Java example of a Kafka producer:

java

import org.apache.kafka.clients.producer.KafkaProducer;

import org.apache.kafka.clients.producer.ProducerRecord;

import java.util.Properties;

public class SimpleProducer {

public static void main(String[] args) {

Properties props = new Properties();

props.put(“bootstrap.servers”, “localhost:9092”);

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 6 of 19
:
 props.put(“key.serializer”,
“org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringSerializer”);

props.put(“value.serializer”,
“org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringSerializer”);

KafkaProducer<String, String> producer = new KafkaProducer<>(props);

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {

producer.send(new ProducerRecord<>(“test-topic”, Integer.toString(i),

“message-” + i));

producer.close();

Advanced Producer Features

Advanced features include:

Acknowledgments: Ensuring that messages are received by the broker.

Retries: Handling transient errors.

Batching: Grouping messages to improve performance.

Building a Consumer Application

Consumer Configuration
Consumers require properties such as the broker address, group ID, and

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 7 of 19
:
 deserializers.

Writing the Consumer Code

Here’s a simple Java example of a Kafka consumer:

java

import org.apache.kafka.clients.consumer.ConsumerRecord;

import org.apache.kafka.clients.consumer.ConsumerRecords;

import org.apache.kafka.clients.consumer.KafkaConsumer;

import java.util.Collections;

import java.util.Properties;

public class SimpleConsumer {

public static void main(String[] args) {

Properties props = new Properties();

props.put(“bootstrap.servers”, “localhost:9092”);

props.put(“group.id”, “test-group”);

props.put(“key.deserializer”,
“org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringDeserializer”);

props.put(“value.deserializer”,
“org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringDeserializer”);

KafkaConsumer<String, String> consumer = new KafkaConsumer<>(props);

consumer.subscribe(Collections.singletonList(“test-topic”));

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 8 of 19
:
 while (true) {

ConsumerRecords<String, String> records = consumer.poll(100);

for (ConsumerRecord<String, String> record : records) {

System.out.printf(“offset = %d, key = %s, value = %s%n”, record.offset(),

record.key(), record.value());

Advanced Consumer Features

Advanced features include:

Managing Offsets: Manually controlling the position of the consumer in the stream.

Rebalance Listeners: Handling partition reassignment events.

Commit Strategies: Choosing between automatic and manual offset commits.

Stream Processing with Kafka Streams

Kafka Streams is a client library for building applications that process and transform
data in Kafka. It allows you to create real-time applications that can filter, aggregate,
and join streams of data.

Setting Up Kafka Streams

To get started with Kafka Streams, add the necessary dependencies to your project.
For example, in a Maven project, add the following to your pom.xml:

xml

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 9 of 19
:
 <dependency>

<groupId>org.apache.kafka</groupId>

<artifactId>kafka-streams</artifactId>

<version>2.7.0</version>

</dependency>

Writing a Kafka Streams Application

Here’s an example of a Kafka Streams application that counts the occurrences of
words in a stream of text:

java

import org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.Serdes;

import org.apache.kafka.streams.KafkaStreams;

import org.apache.kafka.streams.StreamsBuilder;

import org.apache.kafka.streams.StreamsConfig;

import org.apache.kafka.streams.kstream.KStream;

import org.apache.kafka.streams.kstream.KTable;

import org.apache.kafka.streams.kstream.Produced;

import java.util.Arrays;

import java.util.Properties;

public class WordCountApp {

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 10 of 19
:
 public static void main(String[] args) {

Properties props = new Properties();

props.put(StreamsConfig.APPLICATION_ID_CONFIG, “wordcount-
application”);

props.put(StreamsConfig.BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS_CONFIG, “localhost:9092”);

props.put(StreamsConfig.DEFAULT_KEY_SERDE_CLASS_CONFIG,
Serdes.String().getClass());

props.put(StreamsConfig.DEFAULT_VALUE_SERDE_CLASS_CONFIG,
Serdes.String().getClass());

StreamsBuilder builder = new StreamsBuilder();

KStream<String, String> textLines = builder.stream(“TextLinesTopic”);

KTable<String, Long> wordCounts = textLines

.flatMapValues(textLine -> Arrays.asList(textLine.toLowerCase().split(“\\W+”)))

.groupBy((key, word) -> word)

.count();

wordCounts.toStream().to(“WordsWithCountsTopic”,
Produced.with(Serdes.String(), Serdes.Long()));

KafkaStreams streams = new KafkaStreams(builder.build(), props);

streams.start();

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 11 of 19
:
 Monitoring and Managing Kafka
Monitoring Kafka is essential to ensure its smooth operation. Some popular tools
include:

Prometheus: An open-source monitoring system that collects and stores metrics.

Grafana: A visualization tool that can be used with Prometheus to create

dashboards.

Kafka Manager: A web-based tool for managing Kafka clusters.

Logging and Alerting

Set up logging and alerts to monitor Kafka’s health and performance. Use tools like
Logstash for collecting logs and Kibana for visualizing them. Set up alerts for critical
metrics such as broker downtime, high latency, and consumer lag.

Performance Tuning
Optimize Kafka performance by:

Partition Strategy: Distributing load evenly across partitions.

Hardware Considerations: Ensuring adequate disk space, memory, and CPU

resources.

Configuration Tuning: Adjusting parameters like batch size, linger time, and buffer
memory for producers.

Conclusion
In this blog, we have explored the fundamentals of Event-Driven Architecture and
how Apache Kafka serves as a powerful tool for building scalable systems. We
covered the basics of Kafka, from setting it up to building producer and consumer
applications, and even delved into stream processing with Kafka Streams. By
implementing EDA with Kafka, you can create responsive, real-time systems
capable of handling large volumes of data efficiently.

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 12 of 19
:
 1+

Fa Li T W M P Pi Te G C
ce n wi h es o nt le m o

Taniya Pan

VIEW ALL POSTS

Data Deduplication Strategies:

Reducing Storage and Improving 
Query Performance

Add comment
Comment

Name *

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 13 of 19
:
 Email *

Website

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

I'm not a robot

reCAPTCHA
Privacy - Terms

SUBMIT COMMENT

You may also like

DATA ANALYTICS DATA ENGINEERING

Data Deduplication Strategies: Reducing

Storage and Improving Query Performance

Taniya Pan  August 1, 2024  Add comment  8 min read

DATA ANALYTICS DATA ENGINEERING

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 14 of 19
:
 Data Monitoring and Troubleshooting:
Monitoring Pipelines and Systems, and
Resolving...

Taniya Pan  July 22, 2024  Add comment  7 min read

DATA ANALYTICS

A Brief Guide to Time Series Analysis

Shreya Purohit  May 20, 2024  Add comment  12 min read

Categories

Agile & Project Management

Analytics

Automation Testing

Backend

.Net

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 15 of 19
:
 java

Python

career

Careers

cyber security

Data Analytics

data science

data architecture

data engineering

Enterprise

Diversity & inclusion

Frontend

Angular

JavaScript

React

Vue

Fullstack

Java + React

Node + React

general tech

Human Resources Management

Information Security

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 16 of 19
:
 Information Security

IT Infra and Networking

Javascript

Job Interview Guides

Job Search

Manual Testing

Mobile

android

iOS

Productivity

Workplace Communication

Quality Assurance (QA)

Manual Testing

Remote Working

Software Engineering

Technology

Artificial Intelligence

Augmented Reality

Data Science

Data Analytics

Developer Guides

DevOps

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 17 of 19
:
 Java

Java Developer Guides

Trends

Virtual Reality

Websites

Recent Posts

Simplify Amazon RDS Stop Scheduling

Building a Simple CRUD Application

with the MERN Stack

Getting Started with TRPC: A Type-safe

API Layer for TypeScript

RSS feed

Fe
e

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 18 of 19
:
 Talent500 helps the world’s fastest growing businesses build
their global workforce.

We help companies hire, build and manage global teams. We

are trusted by industry leaders across the globe – from Fortune
500s and larger enterprises, to some of the world’s fastest-
growing startups. We are backed by Accel Partners & ANSR, a
global leader and enterprise transformation platform.

Follow Us

    

Home

Discover jobs

Enterprise blog

Professionals blog

About us

Terms of use

Privacy policy

Contact us

All rights reserved by Talent500 © 2024.

https://talent500.co/blog/event-driven-architecture-building-scalable-systems-with-apache-kafka/ 30/08/24, 11 39 AM
Page 19 of 19
: