Lenses SQL


Lenses SQL means you don’t have to use a terminal to see what data is being generated by different apps and teams across Kafka environments. You can query and process data quickly and in one place.

What is Lenses SQL? 

Lenses SQL is a declarative Structured Query Language (SQL) interface, for querying, transforming and manipulating data at rest and data in motion. It works with Apache Kafka topics and other data sources. It helps developers and Kafka users to build, debug and support apps on streaming data.

Snapshot vs. Streaming SQL 

There are two types of syntax to create queries with Lenses SQL - Snapshot SQL & Streaming SQL

Lenses SQL snapshot vs streaming

About Snapshot SQL 

Snapshot SQL lets you create point-in-time queries to pull existing data-at-rest from a Kafka topic or other data sources.

Lenses SQL snapshot

What can you do:

  • Explore data in a Kafka topic
  • Debug data and applications
  • run reports

About Streaming SQL 

Useful when creating continuous real-time running queries for live data manipulations. A good fit for Kafka-to-Kafka, results and scales by running a SQL Processor app.

Lenses SQL snapshot vs streaming

What you can do:

  • Filter and transform events as they arrive in real-time
  • Run data quality reports with continuous aggregations and joins
  • Enrich and react to events
  • Change data formats e.g. JSON to AVRO