Salesforce Certified Heroku Architecture Designer — Question 12

A client's Heroku application is publishing messages to an instance of Apache Kafka on Heroku.
What does a second Heroku application need to do to consume those messages?

Answer options

• A. Subscribe to the Kafka partition(s) that the messages are being published to.
• B. Join a consumer group that also includes the publishing application.
• C. Subscribe to the Kafka topic(s) that the messages are being published to.
• D. Convert the publishing application into a stream processor.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

The correct answer is A because to consume messages, the second application must subscribe to the specific Kafka partitions where the messages are being sent. Options B and C are incorrect because joining a consumer group does not guarantee message consumption without the correct subscription, and while subscribing to topics is important, the question specifically asks about partitions which are more granular. Option D is also incorrect as converting the application into a stream processor is not necessary for message consumption.