Kafka Connect

Kafka Connect is the "don't write boilerplate producer/consumer code" framework: a runtime plus a library of connectors that move data between Kafka and external systems. Source connectors pull data in (Debezium for Postgres/MySQL CDC, JDBC for polling, S3 source, MongoDB), Sink connectors push data out (Elasticsearch, S3, another database, JDBC). You configure it via JSON POSTed to a REST API, and the runtime handles scaling, offset tracking, retries, dead letter queues. The killer use case: database CDC into Kafka — Debezium reads the Postgres WAL and publishes row-level changes as events, turning every database update into a consumable stream without touching application code. This is how a monolith exposes events to new microservices without a rewrite. The trade-off: Connect is another system to operate and the connector quality varies wildly — battle-test before committing production workloads to a community-maintained connector.