Kappa Architecture
Low Priority14 min readUpdated October 8, 2026
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Many data systems need two things at once: results that update within seconds, and the ability to recompute old results when something was calculated wrong. The Lambda architecture handles this with two separate pipelines, one for streaming and one for batch. The Kappa architecture handles both with a single streaming pipeline.
In this chapter, we will look at what the Kappa architecture is, how it handles both real-time and historical data using a single streaming pipeline, how historical reprocessing works, and the trade-offs involved.