SQL Agent

The SQL Agent is a process that runs on a target system and is responsible for consuming change messages from the Kafka CDC topic, transforming a message's data into a usable form and then reproducing the event described by the message in the table of a Microsoft SQL Server database, usually present on the same system.

In the event that the SQL Agent determines it has been started for the first time in a new environment, it will send a snapshot request to the snapshot agent via the snapshot request topic, and then wait for a response on the snapshot response topic.

Once a response is received, the new snapshot will be downloaded from network storage and applied to the database, and the agent will resume processing messages from the CDC topic offset indicated by the snapshot, thus bringing the database fully up to date with the system of record.

The SQL Agent is a .NET 8 application and is available on Windows and Linux.