Apache Kafka Complete Practice Exam 2025 – All-in-One Prep

Kafka's log compaction is particularly useful for maintaining the latest state of user profiles because it allows Kafka to retain only the most recent value for each key while discarding older messages. In scenarios where you want to ensure that you always have access to the most up-to-date state, such as user profile data that can be frequently updated, log compaction provides an efficient way to manage this.

When a user profile is updated, the new state replaces the old state in the log, and only the latest entry remains available for retrieval. This means that consumers can quickly access the current version of a user's profile without needing to sift through all the historical updates. Log compaction optimizes storage and performance by reducing the overall size of the log while still providing the latest state for each key.

In contrast, log compaction would not be as applicable for streaming video data, as this type of data often requires retaining every piece of content to allow for sequential playback. Maintaining a consistent backup of all messages would involve keeping a complete history rather than just the latest state, which is not the focus of log compaction. Similarly, ensuring chronological message delivery pertains more to preserving the order of messages rather than their latest state, which is not the primary purpose of log compaction