Streaming Glossary

Browse 24 streaming terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

24 Streaming Terms

AI Streaming
The delivery of AI output incrementally as it is produced rather than waiting for the full response to complete. AI streaming improves perceived speed and can...
Apache Kafka
A distributed event streaming platform that handles high-throughput, fault-tolerant, real-time data feeds. Messages are organized into topics, partitioned for...
Apache Kafka
A distributed event-streaming platform used for high-throughput messaging, logs, and data pipelines.
backpressure
A flow control mechanism where a downstream system signals to an upstream producer to slow down because it cannot process messages fast enough. Without...
Backpressure
A flow control mechanism where a slow consumer signals an upstream producer to slow down, preventing buffer overflow and memory exhaustion. Without...
Buffer
Buffer is a temporary storage area in memory used to hold data while it is being transferred between two locations or processes that operate at different...
CDC
Change Data Capture — a pattern for tracking and propagating changes made to a database by tailing its transaction log rather than polling for differences. CDC...
Change Data Capture
A pattern for tracking and streaming row-level changes (inserts, updates, deletes) from a database to downstream systems in real-time. Tools like Debezium read...
Chunk
A contiguous block of data treated as a single unit during processing, storage, or transfer. Chunking is used to break large datasets into manageable pieces...
Chunk Upload
An upload approach that splits a large file into smaller chunks transmitted separately so progress can be resumed, retried, or parallelized. Chunk uploads are...
Consumer Group
A set of consumers that cooperatively consume a Kafka topic, with each partition assigned to exactly one consumer in the group. Adding consumers (up to the...
Input Stream
An Input Stream is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Kafka Consumer
A client application that reads records from one or more Kafka topics, typically as part of a consumer group that divides partitions among members. Consumers...
Kafka Partition
A Kafka topic is split into ordered, immutable partitions that enable parallel consumption. Messages with the same key always go to the same partition...
Kafka Producer
A client application that publishes records to Kafka topics, optionally choosing keys to control partitioning and ordering. Producers can batch messages,...
Live Coding
The practice of writing or modifying code in real time in front of an audience — during a livestream, conference talk, interview, or music performance. In the...
LLM Streaming
The incremental delivery of large language model output as it is generated rather than only after completion finishes. LLM streaming improves perceived...
Model Streaming
The incremental delivery of model output as it is produced rather than returning only a completed result at the end. Model streaming improves perceived...
OBS Studio
An open-source application for video recording, live streaming, and scene-based media production.
parasocial
Describing a one-sided relationship in which one person extends emotional energy, interest, and time toward a public figure who is unaware of their existence....
Server-Sent Events
A simple HTTP-based protocol for one-way server-to-client streaming. The server sends text events over a long-lived HTTP connection using the text/event-stream...
Sink
The terminal endpoint of a data pipeline or stream that consumes data without producing further output — such as a database writer, log file, or /dev/null. It...
Watermark
A mechanism in stream processing that tracks progress in event time, declaring that no more events with timestamps before the watermark will arrive. Enables...
Windowing
Dividing an infinite data stream into finite chunks for aggregation. Tumbling windows are fixed, non-overlapping intervals (every 5 minutes). Sliding windows...

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