Not all Kafka integration tools are the same. Some integration systems only produce JSON data without a schema. The JDBC Sink Connector requires a schema. Here are steps showcasing a low-code option to push events into a relational database when the source data is schema-less JSON.
Are you interested in setting up Kafka without Zookeeper and with a dedicated controller quorum? Here are the steps and reference project showcasing how to do this using the Confluent community-licensed container images. A Grafana dashboard to observe the new metrics is also provided.
If you want to make sure your expected String key is what you think it is, using BytesDeserializer with your console consumers is better than StringDeserializer.
Are you interested in using Grafana to monitor an Apache Kafka Cluster? Are you concerned you can integrate it with a specific cluster configurations? Using Grafana requires a fair amount of infrastructure to be established. While there are plenty of examples out there, you can spend a lot of time adjusting dashboards to get a desired setup.
Setting up multiple kafka cluster configurations to explore the nuances of various tools that monitor Apache Kafka.
The published Apache Druid container at Docker is a linux/amd64 only image. Running this on your Apple Silicon (M1 or M2 chipset) is slow.