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# Apache Kafka

To read and work with data from your Apache Kafka topic in Upsolver, you should first create a connection to your Kafka cluster that provides Upsolver with the necessary credentials to access your data. This guides shows you how.

## Create a Kafka connection

#### Simple example

A Kafka connection can be created as simply as follows:

```sql
CREATE KAFKA CONNECTION my_kafka_connection
    HOSTS = ('foo:9092', 'bar:9092');
```

However, you may find that additional connection options may need to be configured in order to provide the proper credentials to read from your Kafka cluster.

#### Full example

The following example also creates a Kafka connection but sets additional options such as `CONSUMER_PROPERTIES` to ensure the configurations necessary to ingest data from this example cluster are provided:

```sql
CREATE KAFKA CONNECTION my_kafka_connection
    HOSTS = ('foo:9092', 'bar:9092')
    CONSUMER_PROPERTIES = 
       'bootstrap.servers = HOST:PORT
       security.protocol = SASL_SSL
       sasl.jaas.config = org.apache.kafka.common.security.plain.PlainLoginModule   
             required username = "API_KEY"   password = "SECRET";
       ssl.endpoint.identification.algorithm = https
       sasl.mechanism = PLAIN'
    VERSION = CURRENT
    REQUIRE_STATIC_IP = true
    SSL = false
    TOPIC_DISPLAY_FILTERS = ('topic1', 'topic2')
    COMMENT = 'My new Kafka connection';
```

## Alter a Kafka connection

Some connection options are considered mutable, meaning that in some cases, you can run a SQL command to alter an existing Kafka connection rather than create a new one.

For example, take the simple Kafka connection we created previously:

```sql
CREATE KAFKA CONNECTION my_kafka_connection
    HOSTS = ('foo:9092', 'bar:9092');
```

If it turns out certain consumer properties need to be configured in order from our cluster, instead of having to create an entirely new connection, you can run the following command:

```sql
ALTER KAFKA CONNECTION my_kafka_connection
    SET CONSUMER_PROPERTIES = 
       'bootstrap.servers = HOST:PORT
       security.protocol = SASL_SSL
       sasl.jaas.config = org.apache.kafka.common.security.plain.PlainLoginModule   
             required username = "API_KEY"   password = "SECRET";
       ssl.endpoint.identification.algorithm = https
       sasl.mechanism = PLAIN'; 
```

Note that some options such as `VERSION` cannot be altered once the connection has been created.

## Drop a Kafka connection

If you no longer need a connection, you can easily drop it with the following SQL command:

```sql
DROP CONNECTION my_kafka_connection; 
```

However, note that if there are existing tables or jobs that are dependent upon the connection in question, the connection cannot be deleted.

***

{% hint style="success" %}
**Learn More**

To discover which connection options are mutable, and to learn more about the options, please see the SQL command reference for [Apache Kafka](/content/reference-1/sql-commands/connections/create-connection/apache-kafka.md).
{% endhint %}


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