From Chaos to Contracts: Governing Apache Kafka Data Streams

Apache Kafka offers significant flexibility for data streaming, but the lack of native structure can lead to disorganized event streams and excessive complexity for consuming applications. This session focuses on defining and enforcing data contracts at the source to improve stream reliability. It covers the use of schema registries, supporting formats like Apache Avro and Google Protobuf, and discusses strategies for safe schema evolution. The presentation also explores how CI/CD pipelines and automated build-time checks can prevent data quality issues, providing a practical blueprint for transforming event streams into discoverable, high-quality data products.