What is the relationship between Flink and Kafka?

Flink and Kafka are two separate open-source projects that can be used together.

1. Flink is a distributed computing framework based on stream processing, which can be used for real-time data stream processing and batch processing. It offers a variety of APIs and tools for handling and analyzing real-time data streams, supporting various data sources and formats.
2. Kafka is a high-throughput distributed messaging system used for processing and storing real-time data streams. It offers a persistent, ordered, partitioned message queue that can be used to separate data producers and consumers, supporting large-scale data stream processing and distribution.

Flink and Kafka can be combined to achieve efficient real-time data stream processing. Flink can read data from Kafka, process and analyze it in real-time, then write the results back to Kafka or other target systems. This combination allows us to take advantage of Kafka’s high throughput and reliability, while leveraging Flink’s powerful stream processing capabilities to achieve efficient real-time data processing and analysis.