New with Confluent Platform 7.9: Oracle XStream CDC Connector, Client-Side Field Level Encryption (EA), Confluent for VS Code, and More

At Confluent, we’re committed to building the world's leading data streaming platform, which gives you the ability to stream, connect, process, and govern all of your data, and make it available wherever it’s needed—however it’s needed—in real time.

Today, we're excited to announce the release of Confluent Platform 7.9!

This release builds upon Apache Kafka® 3.9, reinforcing our core capabilities as a data streaming platform. Below are the release highlights, and you can find additional details about the features in the release notes.

This launch is all about making it easier than ever to connect and build trusted data products— whether you're securing data, streamlining development, or integrating new sources.

New key capabilities:

• Connect to source data and get highly performant and reliable streaming of change events, using the new Oracle XStream CDC Source Connector

• Build, manage, and monitor data streaming applications—all within your preferred IDE—using Confluent for VS Code

• Protect your most sensitive data by encrypting individual fields within messages, using Client-Side Field Level Encryption (Early Access)

Oracle XStream CDC Source Connector

With this release we’re excited to add a new self-managed connector to our Connect portfolio, powered by Oracle XStream technology. The Oracle XStream CDC Connector delivers enterprise-grade performance, scalability, and reliability, for real-time, event-driven streaming architectures.

With this connector, organizations can cost-effectively stream high-value operational data from Oracle databases to modern platforms, enabling real-time analytics, event-driven applications, and automated workflows. Unlike traditional CDC solutions that suffer from throughput limitations and performance degradation during large transactions, the XStream-based connector is purpose-built for high-throughput, low-latency streaming, ensuring minimal impact on source databases at scale, as well as the lowering of overall data management costs.

With the Confluent Oracle XStream CDC Connector, organizations can modernize their data infrastructure, eliminate integration complexity, and unlock real-time intelligence—all while reducing costs and accelerating innovation. This connector will be generally available by the end of March 2025. For a deeper dive, check out the blog.

Confluent for Visual Studio Code (VS Code)

After working with many customers and early adopters to make this the ultimate tool for Kafka developers, we’re thrilled to announce that Confluent for VS Code is now Generally Available with support for Confluent Platform clusters! This extension is open source, free, and readily accessible on the VS Code Marketplace.

Developers working with real-time data know the struggle—juggling multiple tools, switching between environments, and dealing with fragmented workflows that slow down innovation. Confluent for VS Code changes this by bringing Kafka development directly into your favorite IDE. With built-in tools for managing topics, browsing and searching messages, and integrating seamlessly with Schema Registry, you can now streamline project setup, debug in real time, and iterate on your data streams—all without leaving your IDE.

“Our platform team has found the ability to browse messages via Confluent Cloud for VS Code to be incredibly beneficial, not only for us but also for other product teams involved in producing or consuming messages. The extension addressed an immediate need for our team by enabling us to view and search through large volumes of events.”

— Bill Overton, Product Owner at Eaton

By integrating Confluent with VS Code, Kafka developers can:

• Accelerate project setup and ensure consistency across all development efforts with ready-to-use templates

• Easily create and edit Kafka topics with built-in schema association, giving you clear visibility to produce Kafka messages to topics and iterate on existing schemas

• Code and debug in one place with visibility into Confluent resources, so you can easily search, filter, and compare Kafka messages in real-time

Whether you're building event-driven applications or optimizing data pipelines, this extension makes real-time development faster, smoother, and more intuitive. Install the extension and get started today.

Want to learn more? Check out the announcement blog and tune into Streaming Frontiers for a livestream demo.

Client-Side Field Level Encryption (Early Access)

Last fall we introduced Client-Side Field Level Encryption in Confluent Cloud, and now we are extending this on-prem. Client-Side Field Level Encryption (CSFLE) on Confluent Platform is now in Early Access. CSFLE complements our existing suite of enterprise-grade security features like data-in-transit encryption via Transport Layer Security (TLS), and role-based access controls (RBAC), and provides an additional layer of security to safeguard your most sensitive data throughout its lifecycle.

For organizations in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, and the public sector, there's often a need for even tighter data protection, especially for sensitive information like PII. CSFLE allows you to encrypt individual fields within messages on the producer side, ensuring only authorized users or applications can decrypt and access data.

With CSFLE, organizations can:

• Improve the security of sensitive data and adhere to strict compliance requirements

• Maintain flexible and granular access control regarding the specific fields to encrypt

• Lower total cost of ownership and operational complexity by reducing the need for topic duplication

We look forward to continuing to expand governance capabilities for on-premises and hybrid environments. To get started using CSFLE on Confluent Platform in Early Access, please reach out to your account team.

Additional Features and Updates 

• Securing a Confluent Platform ksqlDB Server and Flink with OAuth This release offers a unified and consistent security experience across Confluent Platform with the release of OAuth support for ksqlDB and Flink.

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• Continuing to enhance Confluent Control Center (C3) This release adds more features and enhancements to C3’s refreshed UI such as the status of consumer groups (stable, empty); reset offset to earliest, latest, or a specific offset; and bulk reset offset to earliest or latest for a consumer group with clients consuming from multiple topics. These new capabilities are supported for generic consumers (connector, ksqlDB, and KStreams clients are not supported). Learn more.

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• Official Confluent Node.js client for Apache Kafka This is now generally available and includes support from Confluent for Kafka and Schema Registry. Learn more.

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• KRaft mode enhancements This version of Confluent Platform includes KRaft controller membership changes. This feature makes quorum membership dynamic, and enables controller nodes to be added and removed by using the kafka-metadata-quorum.sh tool, or the associated AdminClient API.

Confluent for Kubernetes (CFK) Updates

Confluent for Kubernetes now supports migration of the default enabling dynamic PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) storage class from Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) to Amazon Elastic File System (EFS). This release also includes schema CRD enhancements, and allows the configuration of HTTP proxy settings such as http_proxy and https_proxy, using newly implemented Helm environment variables. For the full details on the latest in Confluent for Kubernetes, check out the release notes.

CFK 2.11.0 allows you to deploy and manage Confluent Platform versions from 7.1.x to 7.9.x on Kubernetes versions 1.25 to 1.32 (OpenShift 4.12 to 4.17). For details on installing CFK and Confluent Platform, see Deploy Confluent for Kubernetes and Deploy Confluent Platform using Confluent for Kubernetes.

CP Ansible Updates

Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform now supports OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication and Open Authorization (OAuth) 2.0 authorization for ksqlDB, specifically for ksqlDB as a server and Control Center as a client. This support includes RBAC and non-RBAC configurations for both the new and existing clusters. With this release, you can also enable RBAC in a running Confluent Platform environment using Ansible playbooks.

For the full details on the latest in Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform, check out the release notes. Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform 7.9.0 allows you to deploy Confluent Platform version 7.9.0. This release supports Ansible versions 7.x to 9.x and Python versions 3.9 and above. The recommended Ansible versions are 9.x. For more information, see Prerequisites for Installing Confluent Platform with Ansible Playbooks.

Built on Apache Kafka® 3.9

Confluent Platform 7.9 is built on Apache Kafka version 3.9. For more details about Apache Kafka 3.9, please read the blog post or check out the release notes.

Apache Kafka 4.0 and Client Version Support Changes

In preparation for the next Confluent Platform release built on Apache Kafka 4.0, we’d like to inform you that in 4.0, the Apache Kafka community will be removing support for certain legacy clients. Moving forward, clients must be using Apache Kafka 2.1 or newer. Apache Kafka 3.7 (released February 2024) has already marked these legacy API versions as deprecated. Please see KIP-896 for details on the client versions that will be deprecated.

Confluent Platform 8.0, coming in Summer 2025, will remove support for these legacy clients. You are welcome to use the full extent of your support plan to remain on supported Confluent Platform versions until you are ready to upgrade to Confluent Platform 8.0.

We will update documentation and tooling for analyzing logs to help you:

• Identify clients that are using deprecated versions

• Navigate how to update clients to compliant and stable client versions

• Our Professional Services team can work with you to migrate from deprecated clients to compliant, stable, and performant clients. In the meantime, please reach out to your account team if you have any questions.

Get Started Today

Download Confluent Platform 7.9 today to get started with the only cloud-native and comprehensive platform for data in motion, built by the original creators of Apache Kafka.

The preceding outlines our general product direction and is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality. The development, release, timing, and pricing of any features or functionality described may change. Customers should make their purchase decisions based on services, features, and functions that are currently available.

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