Kafka Partition

Definitions

1. A Kafka topic is split into ordered, immutable partitions that enable parallel consumption. Messages with the same key always go to the same partition (ordering guarantee per key). Each partition is consumed by exactly one consumer in a consumer group. More partitions = more parallelism, but also more overhead and less ordering guarantee across partitions.

   In plain English: A subdivision of a Kafka topic that enables parallel processing while guaranteeing message order within each subdivision.

   Example: "Partition the orders topic by customer_id -- all orders for the same customer go to the same partition, preserving order per customer."

Related Terms

• Buffer
• Chunk
• Coforall
• Concurrency
• Change Data Capture
• Avro
• Consumer Group
• Kafka Consumer
• Kafka Producer
• Kafka Stream
• Producer