Delete records

For GDPR reasons or in cases when inconsistent data are published, we may want to delete records from a topic.

To delete a record from a topic it is enough to produce a new record with the same key but with an empty value. This new record with empty value is called tombstone.

Notice that it is possible to delete records only from topics with the configuration cleanup.policy set to compact.

In Insulator, it is possible to check the topic configurations from the Info view.

If the topic is compacted, the Producer view can be used to produce a tombstone and delete a record.

Set the same Key as the record to delete and check the Tombstone box.

Press Send when ready to produce the tombstone.

In the consumed records table, a tombstone is a normal row in which the value is <null>.