Hi folks. I'm pretty new to Kafka. I have spent a fair amount of time so far understanding the Kafka system in general and how producers and consumers work. I'm now trying to get a grasp on how Kafka Connect compares/contrasts to Producers/Consumers written via the Java API.
When might someone want to write their own Java Producer/Consumer versus using a connector in Kafka Connect? How does Kafka Connect use producers and consumers behind the scenes? Why wouldn't we simply want a producer/consumer library that contains producers and consumers written to work with various external systems such as HDFS? Why this new framework? Thanks for any clarification!
