Topic 17.2
Intermediate Questions (16–35)
In one line
Twenty mechanism questions: ordering, consumer crashes, lag, rebalancing, acks=all, min.insync.replicas, idempotence, delivery semantics, exactly-once and transactions, compaction and tombstones, schemas and Schema Registry, Connect, Streams, KStream vs KTable, repartitioning, DLTs and retries.
Think of it like this
A practical exam where you explain what happens when a machine breaks, not just what the machine is called.
Key ideas
- 01
Answer shape: mechanism → failure it prevents or causes → configuration → an example.
- 02
These map to Phases 2–11.
Explain it without notes
16. How does Kafka guarantee ordering?
17. What happens when a consumer crashes?
18. What is consumer lag?
19. What is rebalancing?
20. What is acks=all?
21. What is min.insync.replicas?
22. What is the idempotent producer?
23. At-most-once vs at-least-once?
24. What is exactly-once in Kafka?
25. What are Kafka transactions?
26. What is log compaction?
27. What is a tombstone?
28. What is schema evolution?
29. What is Schema Registry?
30. What is Kafka Connect?
31. What is Kafka Streams?
32. KStream vs KTable?
33. What is repartitioning?
34. What is a DLT?
35. How do you implement retry?
Done when you can
I can answer all 20 intermediate questions with configurations and failure behaviour.