Kafka Topic Names - A Wild Naming Adventure!



Hey there, fellow Kafka enthusiasts! Let's embark on a thrilling journey to explore the mysterious world of Kafka topic naming. Buckle up, and get ready to tame the bike shed!

You won't believe it, but there's a surprising lack of guidance on naming Kafka topics out there. Some suggest fancy schemes like <root name space>.<product>.<product specific hierarchy>, but we've got some even juicier ideas.

Now, naming conventions come in two flavors: structural and semantic. The former decides punctuation and format, while the latter decides what goes into the name and in what order.

Get your creative hats on! People have concocted some interesting fields for topic names, from product names to schema names and everything in between.

Hold on tight! Here's the good stuff - the dos and don'ts. Avoid fields that change, like team names or service names. Trust me, renaming a topic is like herding cats, and we don't want that.

Psst, here's a secret! If you can fetch the info from elsewhere, like the Schema Registry or Kafka metadata, why not do that? Let's keep things neat and tidy.

Oh, and don't tie topic names to consumers or producers. They're like a revolving door, and we don't want to be caught in that loop!

So, what's the winning recipe for Kafka topic names? Simple, flexible, and relatable - <message type>.<dataset name>.<data name>. It's like a traditional RDBMS style with a Kafka twist!

To keep things cool, stick with snake_case (camelCase and lisp-case are too hipster).

Now, enforce the rules like a boss! Limit topic creation and have those who create topics follow the convention. An automated process would be the icing on the cake.

Time to conquer the Kafka topic name challenge! Let's name those topics like the Kafka pros we are! 🚀"

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