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Apache Kafka Series - Confluent Schema Registry & REST Proxy (Udemy.com)

Kafka - Master Avro, the Confluent Schema Registry and Kafka REST Proxy. Build Avro Producers/Consumers, Evolve Schemas

4.8
3,794 reviews

Created by: Stephane Maarek

Last updated September 2026

Our take

Based on the ratings of 3,794 students, a sample of their written reviews and the syllabus, as the course stood in September 2026. No course pays to be reviewed.

Stephane Maarek's course covers three pieces of the Confluent Kafka stack: Apache Avro, the Schema Registry and the REST Proxy. It runs 4.5 hours across 58 lectures, so it is short and narrow. The audience list says it is for people who already understand Kafka basics, and some Java is expected. The listing itself warns that Kafka does not show up until the Schema Registry section. The first stretch is Avro on its own, with schemas and Java objects, before any topics are involved.

Reviewers praise the hands-on examples and the way Maarek explains things. One says they knew nothing about Schema Registry and now feel comfortable with it. The complaints are mostly about age. One says the Docker setup is deprecated, and another hit problems on an M1 Mac. Another wanted a section on testing code that uses Schema Registry without a real server. One reviewer says the REST Proxy gets only a brief treatment, and a single one-star review says nothing worked and support never answered.

About 30,000 students have enrolled, and the average is 4.8 across 3,794 reviews, with 2,516 of them five stars. The course page shows an update in September 2026, but complaints about old tooling run through the sample, so be ready to adapt the setup. It suits a Java developer who needs schema enforcement in a Kafka pipeline and wants it quickly. Anyone after REST Proxy depth or testing patterns will need other material.

Best forJava developers who know Kafka basics and need to add Avro and Schema Registry to an existing pipeline.
Skip it ifYou are new to Kafka, or you want deep REST Proxy coverage or testing patterns for Schema Registry.

Pros

  • Starts with Avro and Java objects before Kafka, so the registry section makes sense
  • Reviewers praise the hands-on examples and Maarek's clear explanations
  • Only 4.5 hours, so schema evolution and the Java producer and consumer are quick to cover
  • Updated September 2026, with a 4.8 average across 3,794 reviews

Cons

  • Some reviewers say the Docker setups are deprecated, and an M1 Mac user reported problems
  • The REST Proxy gets only a brief treatment, according to one reviewer
  • One reviewer found nothing on testing code that uses Schema Registry without a live server
Great course for explaining basics of Apache Avro, Schema Registry and using them in the code. The usage of REST Proxy is briefly explained with examples.
Karel Auf, a student

Intermediate fits: it needs working Kafka knowledge, some Java and JSON, and REST API familiarity helps.

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What you will learn

  • Write simple and complex Avro Schemas
  • Create, Write and Read Avro objects in Java
  • Write a Java Producer and Consumer leveraging Avro data and the Schema Registry
  • Learn about Schema Evolution
  • Perform Schema evolution using the command line and in Java
  • Utilize the REST Proxy using a REST Client

Who it is for

The instructor says it suits

  • Developers who would like to learn how to write and run an application that leverages Avro and the Schema Registry
  • Architects who want to understand the role of the Schema Registry and REST Proxy in an enterprise pipeline
  • This course is intended for people who fully understand the basics of Kafka
  • People who want to learn the Confluent Components: Schema Registry and REST Proxy

What you need before you start

  • Good knowledge of Apache Kafka
  • Some Java knowledge
  • A recent computer (Windows / Linux / Mac OS X) with 4GB of RAM
  • Understand JSON data format
  • Knowledge of REST APIs is better

How it compares

Against the other 150 rated Udemy courses in Hadoop on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.8 out of 5higher than 96% of them
  • Reviews3,794#16 of 151 by number of reviews
  • Length4.5 hoursshorter than 64% of them
  • Last updatedSeptember 2026more recently than 98% of them

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Course Description

The new volume in the Apache Kafka Series!

Learn Apache Avro, the Confluent Schema Registry for Apache Kafka and the Confluent REST Proxy for Apache Kafka. Join hundreds of knowledge savvy students into learning some of the most important components in a typical Apache Kafka stack.

Take a look at these student reviews...

5 stars - "Excellent course. A must for Apache Kafka users." – Mayank

5 stars -"Beautiful explanation of Avro and how to use it with Apache Kafka. This knowledge enhancing like all your other courses. We have Apache Kafka from Confluent in our enterprise and this is what I was exactly looking for. Thanks a lot." – Vinod

5 stars - "Stephane Maarek is truly remarkable instructor! His instructional videos do not disappoint, they keep me wanting more and provide exactly the Kafka skills needed to be successful." – Troy

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Apache Avro is one of the most powerful and most popular fast data serialisation mechanism with Apache Kafka

> Schema is a first class citizen of the data
> Data serialisation format that is lightweight
> Documentation is embedded in the schema
> Easy to read and write using many languages
> Fast & Big data de-facto data serialisation format


Confluent Schema Registry for Apache Kafka is the de-facto standard way of storing Avro Schemas for your Apache Kafka Topics.

> Stores a versioned history of all your schemas in Apache Kafka
> Supports and enforces conditions for schema evolution (backward, forward, full compatibility)
> Kafka Avro Serialiser and Deserialiser automatically integrate with Apache Kafka and Confluent Schema Registry
> Make your messages much smaller and lighter! Perfect for increasing Apache Kafka throughput and performance

Confluent REST Proxy is the perfect way to communicate for sending Avro data using non Java languages to Apache Kafka. 

> Write and Read binary, JSON and Avro data to Apache Kafka using an HTTP REST API
> Interact with Apache Kafka using any programming language (not just Java)
> Consult topic list and topic metadata in Apache Kafka

Hands On & Theory Based Course

Note: This course is comprehensive, and the Apache Kafka related bits do not start before the Kafka Schema Registry section. This is to ensure Avro Schema and Avro in Java is fully understood before moving to the Confluent Schema Registry for Apache Kafka. 

This course is the first and only available Kafka Schema Registry and Kafka REST Proxy course on the web. Get it now to become an Apache Kafka expert!


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Instructor

My name is Stephane Maarek, and I'll be your instructor in this course. I teach about Apache Kafka, the Kafka ecosystem and Kafka Certifications with my focus always on helping my students improve their professional proficiencies. I am also the co-founder of Conduktor: an enterprise Apache Kafka platform & UI to help everyone use Kafka.

Throughout my career in designing and delivering these certifications and courses, I have already taught 1,000,000+ students and gotten 350,000+ reviews!

With Apache Kafka becoming much more than a buzzword out there, I've decided it's time for students to properly learn how to be a Kafka professional. So, let’s kick start the course! You are in good hands!

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This Course Also Comes With:

  • Lifetime Access to All Future Updates

  • A responsive instructor in the Q&A Section

  • Links to interesting articles, and lots of good code to base your next applications onto

  • Udemy Certificate of Completion Ready for Download

This is the course that could improve your career!

Apache Kafka is a skill in high demand and there are not enough people to fulfill all the open positions. You can boost your income, take on new roles and fun challenges. Many of my students are now the Kafka experts of their companies! You can be the next!

I hope to see you inside the course!

=======================

Note: Looking for more advanced Kafka concepts? There are many volumes in the Apache Kafka Series:

  • Learn Kafka for Beginners v2 (great to start)

  • Kafka Connect Hands On Learning

  • Kafka Streams for Data Processing

  • KSQL on ksqlDB - Hands On!

  • Kafka Cluster Setup & Administration

  • Confluent Schema Registry & Kafka REST Proxy

  • Kafka Security (SSL SASL ACL)

  • Kafka Monitoring and Operations

Happy learning!
Read More Intermediate Intermediate Level product length iconTime: 4.5h

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Instructor Details

Stephane Maarek

Stephane is a solutions architect, consultant and software developer that has a particular interest in all things related to Cloud & Big Data. He's also a many-times best seller instructor on Udemy for his courses in AWS and Apache Kafka.


[See FAQ below to see in which order you can take my courses]

Stéphane is recognized as an AWS Hero and is an AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional & AWS Certified DevOps Professional. He loves to teach people how to use the AWS properly, to get them ready for their AWS certifications, and most importantly for the real world.

He also loves Apache Kafka. He used on the Program Committee organizing the Kafka Summit in New York, London and San Francisco. He also was an active member of the Apache Kafka community, and has authored blogs on Medium and the guest blog for Confluent. He also has co-founded Conduktor, a prominent company in the Kafka ecosystem.


During his spare time, Stéphane composes piano music, that he publishes online under the artist name Makera ?


FAQ: In which order should you learn?...

Read More

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Reviews

4.8

3,794 ratings on Udemy

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By Vladimir Kharitoshkin on 9/5/2023

I have to say it was excellent. The content was well-structured, and the hands-on exercises were incredibly helpful. The instructor were knowledgeable, and the course materials were top-notch. I now feel confident in my Kafka skills and would highly recommend this course to anyone looking to learn Kafka.

By Somrat Dutta on 11/10/2022

The course instructor is one of the best in explaining the concepts and terminologies. The only problem is that this course was made very long time ago and needs to be updated as I faced many issues during Docker image, etc as M1 Macs have problem.

By Anonymized User on 4/29/2021

Der Kurs war eine absolute Bereicherung für mich, sehr gute Demos und praktische Beispiele. Damit kann ich unmittelbar etwas anfangen in meinem Job. Das macht mich sicher und kann damit auch mein Verständnis für die Gesamtzusammenhänge in unseren Applikationen besser einschätzen. Der Kurs war auch sehr kurzweilig und alle Codezeilen sind bei mir auch gelaufen und haben das gleiche Ergebnis gebracht - don't change anything, go ahead with this behaviour, Thanks, Stephane!!!

By Xiaoyan Qu on 4/15/2021

It's just another awesome course that beautifully combines the theory and the practical use case! Thanks for making yet another high-quality course! I look forward to learning more on top of it and ready to get my hands dirty and building some stuff! Cheers!

By Vikram on 3/16/2021

This course was very well taught covering all the topics related to Avro schema and schema registry. Greatly helpful at professional level. Extra project at the end of the course integrates other components of the Confluent Kafka technology stack and is designed very close to an enterprise level project.

By Tran Cong Dung on 11/21/2020

I have completed entire sections in this course, it's easy to understand and I know what I'm learning and why I learn this course. It's super useful for my jobs.
Thanks after all.

By David Alberto Torres Jimenez on 11/14/2020

It is an awesome course, it make really easy to understand, and the hands on execrases are really well prepared, maybe it could be great to explain little more about how schema registry internally works, but overall it is an excellent course.
Thank you Stephan!

By Sanda Oancea on 11/7/2020

Excellent course!!! I learned a lot! Thank you!

By Lelong1406 on 11/7/2020

Very good course. This course produce a lot of deep knowledge, help me to map what I know about kafka together.

By Jean-Louis Barr on 11/1/2020

Excellent teaching, permitted me to improve my existing knowledge.

By J_calbo on 10/24/2020

Amazing explanations and course structure.

By Alfeu Duran on 10/23/2020

Amazing!

Showing 12 of 277 reviews

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Overall Score : 96 / 100

Apache Kafka Series - Confluent Schema Registry & REST Proxy
Visit course on Udemy Write a review
  • Video Duration: icon 4.5h
  • Price: $94.99
  • Provider: icon Udemy
  • Updated: icon September 2026
  • Level: Intermediate Intermediate
  • Language: icon English
  • Certificate: icon Yes
  • Lectures:58
  • Practice:4 quizzes
  • Students:30,500
  • Subtitles:8 languages
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