Kafka Connect Flashcards

Which Kafka Connect SMT would you use to add a current timestamp field to every record?

Answer: InsertField with timestamp=true

The InsertField SMT with timestamp=true appends a wall-clock timestamp field to every record passing through the connector.

What does the Kafka Connect 'offset storage topic' store?

Answer: The read positions (offsets) of source connectors so they can resume after restart

Connect stores source connector offsets (e.g., the last processed database row ID) in this internal topic to enable exactly-once or at-least-once resumption.

What HTTP endpoint checks the status of a running connector in Kafka Connect's REST API?

Answer: GET /connectors/{name}/status

GET /connectors/{name}/status returns the current state of the connector and each of its tasks (RUNNING, PAUSED, FAILED, etc.).

What is the 'config storage topic' used for in Kafka Connect distributed mode?

Answer: Stores all connector and task configurations so workers share a consistent view

The config storage topic persists connector configurations across all workers, ensuring every worker in the Connect cluster has the same configuration state.

Which configuration key in a JDBC source connector controls how frequently new rows are polled from the database?

Answer: poll.interval.ms

poll.interval.ms determines the frequency (in milliseconds) at which the JDBC source connector queries the database for new or updated rows.

What happens to a failed Connect task if you POST to `/connectors/{name}/tasks/{taskId}/restart`?

Answer: The specific task is restarted and attempts to resume from its last stored offset

Restarting an individual task via the REST API causes that task to reinitialize and resume data copying from the last committed offset.