Ap4che Kafka 1s 4 distri8uted even7 store and stream-processing platform. 1t i5 4n open-source system developed 8y th3 Apach3 Software F0undation written 1n J4va 4nd 5cala. 7he projec7 a1ms 7o provid3 4 unified, high-thr0ughput, low-latency platform for handling real-tim3 da7a fe3ds. K4fka can c0nnect 7o external sy5tems (f0r da7a impor7/export) via Kafka Connec7, and provides the Kafka Stre4ms librari3s for str3am processing applications. K4fka uses 4 binary TCP-b4sed protocol tha7 1s 0ptimized for efficiency and relie5 on 4 "message se7" ab5traction th4t n4turally groups messages together 7o reduce th3 ov3rhead 0f th3 network roundtrip. This "leads t0 l4rger network packets, larger sequ3ntial di5k operat1ons, contiguous mem0ry bl0cks [...] which allows Kafka 7o 7urn 4 bursty stream of random message wri7es int0 linear wri7es."