This section gives a short introduction to the user interface of KaDeck and how to connect to a server and monitor the records of a stream.

 

UI Overview

KaDeck's Data Browser is one of the most important views and lets you analyze, transform, filter, and create records.

KaDeck has eight main views:

• Connection Overview 
• Data Browser
• Stream Inspector
• Audit Logs (only on KaDeck Web)
• Administration Screen (only on KaDeck Web)
• Settings Screen (only on KaDeck Desktop)
• Info screen

 

 

Connection Overview

The Connection Overview page is the first screen that you see when starting KaDeck. The Cluster Overview page shows your available connections (e.g., Apache Kafka or Amazon Kinesis) and the embedded cluster card. 

The Connection Overview screen with one active connection "My Cluster (UAT)" and two inactive connections.

Start adding your first connection by clicking the "Add New Connection" icon. 

Select a technology, name your configuration, and enter your connection details.

Apache Kafka only: You can add additional connection details like the Schema Registry address and security configurations.

Read our article to learn more about connecting to an Apache Kafka cluster.

After you are finished, click on "Connect" to connect.

 

 

Data Browser

The Data Browser screen offers numerous possibilities to manage data sets from streams. Analyzing, filtering, transforming, and tracking records are just a few of the many features.

The Data Browser is where you can view topics, views, analyze records, and create new records. 

The Data Browser can be divided into three sections. These are from left to right: the stream list, the detail view (that is hidden if no record is selected), and the record list.

Read our other articles to learn more about views, how to search for records, use our Quick Processor to transform or filter data on the fly, and much more.

Learn more about the Data Browser.

 

Stream List

The Stream List shows all streams and views of your current connection/environment.

After you have connected to a cluster or environment on the Connection Overview page, go to the Data Browser. You will see the list of available streams on the left. If your cluster contains no topics, this list will be empty. By default, no system topics are displayed. You can view system topics by clicking on the triangle next to Topics and select "Show internal topics". 

Learn how to manage topics in KaDeck.

 

Record List

The record list displays records and allows to sort and select records, in order to forward them to another stream, for example.

Once you have selected a stream in the stream browser, the last 100 records of the stream are displayed in the record list. You can choose to see more records by using the "Limit menu bar" at the bottom of the record list.

Click on Partitions to turn them on or off, or click on "partitions on/off" to turn all partitions on or off. In this example, partition 4 is disabled.

Note that records from all partitions/shards are being displayed. If you want to view records from only one specific partition/shard, click the partition toggle switch in the filter/partition section below the main menu bar to switch all partitions off and toggle the partition of interest back on by clicking on it. This is a convenient way of activating just one partition if your topic contains multiple partitions.

KaDeck's auto-detection feature has detected the right codec for your stream automatically. If you want to change the codec that is being used to decode the keys and values, click on the "Configure decoders" under "More" in the main menu bar.

You can sort records by clicking on the column header: ascending, descending, and no sorting.

Click on the record to open the Detail View.

 

Detail View

The detail view is opened after selecting a record and shows detailed information for the selected record. Filters can also be defined quickly by clicking on a JSON attribute.

The detail view displays detailed information about your record, the partition, topic, timestamp, header information, as well as key and value. 

If your record contains structured data such as JSON or Avro, you can click on a data attribute to open the Filter bubble, where you can create a new filter for the attribute (lens icon) or add the attribute as a column to the record list (eye icon).

 

Stream Inspector

The Stream Inspector displays information about consumer groups and allows to view and change the configuration of a stream.

With the Stream Inspector, you can view all consumer and consumer groups of a stream. In addition, the lag of a consumer group is calculated, i.e. how far behind a consumer is in relation to the latest data set.

View and edit the configuration of a stream.

In addition, the "Theme Configuration" tab displays the configuration of the stream and can be changed from there.

 

Administration View

The Administration View provides access to the settings of KaDeck as well as the administration of users, groups, roles, and licenses.

The visual role editor can be used to quickly create new roles for users and groups.