Two kinds of book
| Kafka: The Definitive Guide | Pass the CCDAK: A Developer's Fast Track | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | O'Reilly, 2nd edition, November 2021 | CCDAK Prep |
| Length | 485 pages | 166 pages, 15 chapters |
| Written for | Learning and running Kafka | The CCDAK exam |
| Questions | None | 658 practice questions and 349 in six mock exams, in companion books |
| Price | Free e-book from Confluent | USD 49 for the bundle |
When the Definitive Guide is the right book
If you're new to Kafka, its chapters on internals and reliable delivery explain why the configuration works the way it does, and Confluent gives the e-book away for free. It's worth having whichever way you prepare.
When an exam book is
Once the exam is booked, you want the material the exam weights most, the defaults it asks about and enough questions to find your weak spots. That's what the bundle is for, with the study guide, two question books and the cheatsheets. The exam topics page shows how the chapters map to the blueprint.
What is in the study guide
The fifteen chapters, in order: The Fundamentals; The Brokers, Topics and Storage; Producers and Partitioning; Consumers and Consumer Groups; Errors and Retryability; Schemas and Serialization; The Admin Client; Kafka Internals and Architecture; Reliable Delivery and Retries; Exactly Once; Kafka Connect; Security and Authentication; Administration; Monitoring; Kafka Streams.
Using both
Read the study guide first and turn to the Definitive Guide when you want to go deeper on something. Then test yourself with the question books. The four-week plan lays it out week by week.
