Wednesday

Twenty years ago, astronomers learned to use SQL to ask for data from astronomical catalogues. Those quasi-static databases are being overtaken with a deluge of transient observations from surveys such as ZTF and LSST, where astronomers might be more effective with a new technology -- Kafka. Instead of asking, the new paradigm is to set up a listener service, so that the event broker pushes alerts as soon as they are available, and the listener can handle them in a variety of ways, perhaps sending email or slack, by pushing the alert into the queue of a marshal, or even automated follow-up observation. This brief talk with summarise the essential concepts of Kafka.