KIP-26 — Add Kafka Connect framework for data import/export

Accepted Connect

Introduces Kafka Connect, a scalable, fault-tolerant framework for streaming data between Kafka and external systems (databases, HDFS, S3, etc.) using a plugin-based Connector/Task model with distributed worker coordination via Kafka internal topics. Before Connect, users had to write and operate bespoke data pipeline code for each data source/sink, with no standard model for offset management, error handling, or distributed execution.

Details