Kafka

In this section, we provide guides and references to use the Kafka connector.

Configure and schedule Kafka metadata and profiler workflows from the OpenMetadata UI:

If you don't want to use the OpenMetadata Ingestion container to configure the workflows via the UI, then you can check the following docs to connect using Airflow SDK or with the CLI.

Ingest with Airflow

Configure the ingestion using Airflow SDK

Ingest with the CLI

Run a one-time ingestion using the metadata CLI

Requirements

OpenMetadata 0.12 or later

To deploy OpenMetadata, check the Deployment guides.

Connecting to Kafka does not require any previous configuration.

The ingestion of the Kafka topics' schema is done separately by configuring the Schema Registry URL. However, only the Bootstrap Servers information is mandatory.

To run the Ingestion via the UI you'll need to use the OpenMetadata Ingestion Container, which comes shipped with custom Airflow plugins to handle the workflow deployment.

Metadata Ingestion

1. Visit the Services Page

The first step is ingesting the metadata from your sources. Under Settings, you will find a Services link an external source system to OpenMetadata. Once a service is created, it can be used to configure metadata, usage, and profiler workflows.

To visit the Services page, select Services from the Settings menu.

Find Dashboard option on left panel of the settings page

2. Create a New Service

Click on the 'Add New Service' button to start the Service creation.

Add a new Service from the Dashboard Services page

3. Select the Service Type

Select Kafka as the service type and click Next.

Select your service from the list

4. Name and Describe your Service

Provide a name and description for your service as illustrated below.

Service Name

OpenMetadata uniquely identifies services by their Service Name. Provide a name that distinguishes your deployment from other services, including the other {connector} services that you might be ingesting metadata from.

Provide a Name and description for your Service

5. Configure the Service Connection

In this step, we will configure the connection settings required for this connector. Please follow the instructions below to ensure that you've configured the connector to read from your kafka service as desired.

Configure the service connection by filling the form

Connection Options

Bootstrap Servers: List of brokers as comma separated values of broker host or host:port. Example: host1:9092,host2:9092
Schema Registry URL: URL of the Schema Registry used to ingest the schemas of the topics.
SASL Username: SASL username for use with the PLAIN and SASL-SCRAM mechanisms.
SASL Password: SASL password for use with the PLAIN and SASL-SCRAM mechanisms.
SASL Mechanism: SASL mechanism to use for authentication.
Basic Auth User Info: Schema Registry Client HTTP credentials in the form of username:password. By default, user info is extracted from the URL if present.
Consumer Config: The accepted additional values for the consumer configuration can be found in the following link.
Schema Registry Config: The accepted additional values for the Schema Registry configuration can be found in the following link.

Note: To ingest the topic schema Schema Registry URL must be passed

6. Test the Connection

Once the credentials have been added, click on Test Connection and Save the changes.

Test the connection and save the Service

7. Configure Metadata Ingestion

In this step we will configure the metadata ingestion pipeline, Please follow the instructions below

Configure Metadata Ingestion Page

Metadata Ingestion Options

Name: This field refers to the name of ingestion pipeline, you can customize the name or use the generated name.
Topic Filter Pattern (Optional): Use it to control whether to include topics as part of metadata ingestion.
- Include: Explicitly include topics by adding a list of comma-separated regular expressions to the 'Include' field. OpenMetadata will include all topics with names matching one or more of the supplied regular expressions. All other topics will be excluded.
- Exclude: Explicitly exclude topics by adding a list of comma-separated regular expressions to the 'Exclude' field. OpenMetadata will exclude all topics with names matching one or more of the supplied regular expressions. All other topics will be included.
Ingest Sample Data (toggle): Set the 'Ingest Sample Data' toggle to ingest sample data from the topics.
Enable Debug Log (toggle): Set the 'Enable Debug Log' toggle to set the default log level to debug, these logs can be viewed later in Airflow.
Mark Deleted Topics (toggle): Set the 'Mark Deleted Topics' toggle to flag topics as soft-deleted if they are not present anymore in the source system.

8. Schedule the Ingestion and Deploy

Scheduling can be set up at an hourly, daily, weekly, or manual cadence. The timezone is in UTC. Select a Start Date to schedule for ingestion. It is optional to add an End Date.

Review your configuration settings. If they match what you intended, click Deploy to create the service and schedule metadata ingestion.

If something doesn't look right, click the Back button to return to the appropriate step and change the settings as needed.

After configuring the workflow, you can click on Deploy to create the pipeline.

Schedule the Ingestion Pipeline and Deploy

9. View the Ingestion Pipeline

Once the workflow has been successfully deployed, you can view the Ingestion Pipeline running from the Service Page.

View the Ingestion Pipeline from the Service Page

Troubleshooting

Workflow Deployment Error

If there were any errors during the workflow deployment process, the Ingestion Pipeline Entity will still be created, but no workflow will be present in the Ingestion container.

You can then edit the Ingestion Pipeline and Deploy it again.
From the Connection tab, you can also Edit the Service if needed.

Edit and Deploy the Ingestion Pipeline