[asavinov]

> it seems like it's almost a hybrid between a message queue and a database?

If Kafka supported data processing (queries or whatever) then it would be much closer to databases. Also, databases are normally aware of the structure of the data (for example, columns).

Therefore, Kafka can hardly be viewed as a DBMS because it explicitly separates two major concerns:

* data management - how to represent data (Kafka)

* data processing - how to derive/infer new data (Kafka Streams - a separate library)

Theoretically, if they could combine these two layers of functionality in one system then it would be a database.

[Ezku]

For me, the best way to think about Kafka is as a distributed log. That said, it does feature rather robust transformations of log entries - does KSQL count as ”queries or whatever”? https://www.confluent.io/product/ksql/

[techno_modus]

As far as I understand, KSQL is not integral part of Kafka - it is based on Kafka Streams (an independent library). So Kafka is not one system and hence some ambiguity when referring to its functionalities. In particular, "Kafka is as a distributed log" means only Kafka core, not Kafka Streams and KSQL.