I’ve been reading https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-33+-+Add+a+time+based+log+index and trying to determine whether I can use the time-based index as an efficient way to sort a stream of messages into timestamp (CreateTime) order.
I am dealing with a number of sources emitting messages that are then processed in a distributed fashion and written to a Kafka topic. During this processing, the original order of the messages is not strictly maintained. Each message has an embedded timestamp. I’d like to be able to sort these messages back into timestamp order, allowing for a certain lateness interval, before processing them further. For example, supposing the lateness interval is 5 minutes, at time T I’d like to consume from the topic all messages with timestamp up to (T - 5 minutes), in timestamp order. The assumption is that a message should be no more than 5 minutes late; if it is more than 5 minutes late, it can be discarded. Is this something that can be done with the time-based index? Thanks, Ray
