Overall Objectives

Compiled Learning Objectives

Queues

• List advantages of using queues.
• List examples of systems where queues are helpful.
• Explain how a queue helps to avoid system overload.
• Explain how a queue can help reduce service provisioning and costs.
• Identify draw-backs to queue-based systems.

Kafka in a Nutshell

• List the components of the Kafka architecture.
• Explain the purpose of a producer, consumer, and broker.
• Defined a record.
• Define a topic.
• Define a partition.
• Explain the relationship (and differences) between topics and partitions.
• Explain how Kafka knows when a consumer has successfully handled a record.
• Contrast at-most-once and at-least-once delivery.
• Explain why exactly-once delivery is very hard to achieve.

Kafka Paper

• Describe how Kakfa stores data internally.
• Calculate how many partitions are needed to serve a given number of consumers on a topic.
• Contrast push-based and pull-based queueing systems.
• Describe what delivery ordering constraints are and aren’t guaranteed by Kafka.
• Explain limitations of Kafka compared to systems with acknowledgements or two-phase commits.

Project: Kafka Cron Scheduler

• Explain the objectives of the module project.

Cron

• Describe the purpose of cron.
• Write a crontab to run a job every minute, or at fixed times.
• Write a program to parse files containing crontabs and schedule jobs.