Apache Kafka Practice Exam 2025 – The Complete All-in-One Guide for Exam Success!

Log compaction in Kafka is a crucial feature that ensures the retention of only the most recent records for each key, while older records are purged. This process allows for a more efficient use of storage by retaining the latest state of each key instead of keeping every record that has been produced. With log compaction, systems can easily access the current value associated with a key without needing to sift through outdated entries.

This is particularly useful in use cases where the latest state of an entity is more important than the entire history, such as in event sourcing or a stateful application where the current value needs to be retrieved quickly. Log compaction helps maintain the integrity of data by providing a clean snapshot of the latest updates.

The other options focus on aspects of data management but do not accurately reflect the primary function of log compaction. For example, aggregating messages for faster consumption pertains more to optimization techniques, while removing old records without retaining the latest values, compressing log files, or preventing duplicates do not capture the essence of what log compaction achieves.