You can create a mapping with a Kafka source to read data from a Kafka topic. You can create a mapping with any source and a Kafka target to write data to a Kafka topic.

A Kafka source or target represents data in a Kafka stream. Create a PowerExchange for Kafka source or target to read from or write to Apache Kafka brokers.

Kafka runs as a cluster comprised of one or more servers each of which is called a broker. Kafka brokers stream data in the form of messages. These messages are published to a topic.

When you import a Kafka source or target, select the topic name that you want to read from or write to. You can specify the topic name or use a regular expression for the topic name pattern only when you read from Kafka. To subscribe to multiple topics that match a pattern, you can specify a regular expression. When you run the application on the cluster, the pattern matching is done against topics before the application runs. If you add a topic with a similar pattern when the application is already running, the application will not read from the topic.

When you import a Kafka topic, you can specify the format in which the PowerExchange for Kafka reads data from or writes data to a Kafka topic. You can specify JSON or Avro as format. When you specify JSON format, you must provide a sample JSON schema file. When you specify Avro format, provide a sample Avro schema as a

.avsc

file.