Kafka

Apache Kafka is the de facto standard for event streaming. FlowMQ natively implements the Apache Kafka wire protocol, allowing standard Kafka clients to connect to and interact with FlowMQ. FlowMQ does not use any Apache Kafka code and is not an Apache Kafka distribution; its Kafka-compatible protocol implementation was built independently from scratch.

Supported Features

• Kafka producer and consumer APIs
• Topics and partitions
• Consumer groups
• Idempotent producer
• Data retention policy

API Version Negotiation

Kafka clients use the ApiVersions API to discover the versions that FlowMQ supports for each Kafka API and select a mutually supported version for subsequent requests. Any Kafka client that correctly implements this version-negotiation mechanism and supports a compatible version of each required API can interoperate with FlowMQ.

Common Use Cases

• Event streaming
• Real-time analytics pipelines
• Application and service event collection
• IoT data persistence
• Event sourcing and audit logs
• Historical replay and reprocessing

Limitations and Compatibility Notes

• Kafka transaction support is not available.