Apache Kafka Consumer-Producer Confusion

Question

I know about what is Producer and Consumer. But official documentation says

1. It is streaming platform.
2. It is enterprise messaging system.
3. Kafka has connectors which are import and export data from databases and other system also.

What does it mean?

I know Producers are client applications which send data to Kafka Broker and Consumers are also client applications which read data from Kafka Broker.

But my question is, can a Consumer push data into Kafka Broker?

And as per my knowledge, I assume that if Consumer wants to push data into Kafka Broker, it becomes a Producer. Is that correct?

Answer 1

1.It is a streaming platform.

It is used for distribution of a data on a public-subscriber model with a storage layer and processing layer.

2.It is an enterprise messaging system.

Big Data infrastructure is open source, so big data market cost per year approximately $40B and may be increased day by day. So it has come to host of hardware. Despite the open source nature of much of his software, there's a lot of money to be made.

3.Kafka has connectors which are import and export data from databases and other systems also.

Kafka connect provides connectors i.e. Source connector, Sink Connector, JDBC Connector. It provides a facility to importing data from sources and exporting it to multiple targets.

Producers: It can only push data to a Kafka broker or we can say publish data.

Consumers: It can only pull data from the Kafka broker.

Answer 2

A producer produces/puts/publishes messages and as consumer consumes/gets/reads messages.

A consumer can only read, when you want to write you need a producer. A consumer cannot become a producer.

Answer 3

A producer only push data to a Kafka broker.

A consumer only pull data from a Kafka broker.

However, you can have a program being both, a producer and a consumer.