Configure, don't code
The Connect framework
Kafka Connect is a JSON-configured framework of source connectors (read from X, write to Kafka) and sink connectors (read from Kafka, write to Y). You ship Connect workers — never plain Java code — for integration paths.
Single Message Transforms (SMTs) apply per-record edits inline: mask PII, rename fields, cast types, route by content. SMTs are composed in order.