We have some simple Kafka streams apps that populate GlobalKTables to use as caches for topic contents. When running them with info-level logging enabled, I noticed unexpected activity around group coordination (joining, rebalancing, leaving, rejoining) that I didn't expect given that they need to consume from all topic partitions vs. use the group load balancing feature.
I tracked this down to the way the consumer config. is generated for a GlobalKTable consumer -- the groupId is set to the Kafka streams application id instead of to null -- the consumer needlessly creates a ConsumerCoordinator and thus intiiates all the needless associated messaging and overhead. I was going to file a bug for this but per the contributing page am bringing this up here first. Is there a reason why GlobalKTable consumers should bear this group coordination overhead or should I go ahead and file a ticket to remove it? thanks, Chris