AWS re:Invent 2025 - Transforming Apache Kafka into a Scalable Message Queue (OPN413)
Event streaming in Apache Kafka is powerful, but sometimes a queue-based model is more suited for workloads where parallel consumption is more important than ordering. KIP-932 introduces share groups, a feature that allows consumers to cooperatively consume data from Kafka topics, akin to how message queues work. This enables per-message acknowledgment, retries, and load distribution without the complexities of partition management.