You need to design a Kafka-based system that processes user events in order but also scales horizontally. Which approach best balances ordering and scalability?

hard📝 Application Q8 of 15

Kafka - Topics and Partitions

APartition events by user ID key to maintain order per user, allowing parallel processing across users.

BSend all events to a single partition to guarantee global order.

CAssign events randomly to partitions to maximize throughput, ignoring order.

DUse multiple topics for each user to isolate ordering.

Step-by-Step Solution

Solution:

Step 1: Understand ordering vs scalability tradeoff
Ordering requires same partition; scalability requires multiple partitions.
Step 2: Partition by user ID key
Partitioning by user ID keeps order per user and allows parallel processing across users.
Final Answer:
Partition events by user ID key to maintain order per user, allowing parallel processing across users. -> Option A
Quick Check:
Partition by key for order and scale = B [OK]

Quick Trick: Use keys to partition for order and parallelism [OK]

Common Mistakes:

Using single partition limits scalability
Random partitioning loses order
Creating many topics adds complexity

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More Kafka Quizzes

You need to design a Kafka-based system that processes user events in order but also scales horizontally. Which approach best balances ordering and scalability?

Step 1: Understand ordering vs scalability tradeoff

Step 2: Partition by user ID key

Final Answer:

Quick Check:

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