LOG-FIRST OR TABLE-FIRST? APACHE KAFKA, FLUSS, AND STREAMING TABLES

Summary from the TLDR Data newsletter

Kafka remains a strong log abstraction, but many streaming workloads ultimately reconstruct tables in object storage anyway. This walkthrough contrasts log-first pipelines with table-first streaming designs such as Fluss, showing where update semantics, compaction, snapshots, and catalog integration may belong closer to hot storage instead of a downstream lakehouse job.