Kafka, depending on how you use it, can be seen as a Message Broker, Event Store, or a Streaming Platform, etc. Kafka became a preferred technology for many modern applications because of various reasons, like:

Kafka can be used as an Event Store if you are using an event-driven microservices architecture.
Kafka can be used as a Message Broker to enable communication across multiple applications.
Kafka can be used as a streaming platform for processing events in real-time.
etc. etc.

Test

A hands-on guide to setting up Apache Kafka and building a basic Java producer and consumer using the Kafka Client API. Covers Kafka installation via binary download or Docker Compose with ZooKeeper, adding the kafka-clients Maven/Gradle dependency, configuring and running a KafkaProducer with key/value serializers and ACKS_CONFIG, and setting up a KafkaConsumer with manual offset commits, group ID, and poll limits. Full working code examples are provided for both producer and consumer classes.

Kafka Tutorial - Java Producer and Consumer