DBZ-7972 Debezium UI Update blogpost

_posts/2024-08-05-Debezium-ui-update.adoc

@@ -0,0 +1,101 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title:  Status of Debezium UI
+date:   2024-08-05
+tags: [ debezium, ui, features, kubernetes, operator, debezium-server ]
+author: jcechace
+---
+# Status of Debezium UI
+
+Hello everyone, Jakub here. You may have noticed that there wasn't much happening around Debezium UI lately. 
+This, however, would be only partially true. We own you an explanation in this regard, so please bear with me. 
+
+Let's start with the status of the **current** UI project. It became increasing clear that while UI
+for Debezium is an important part of our vision, developing a UI strictly tied to Kafka Connect is 
+not the right direction. It was thus decided to freeze the development of the **current** web UI 
+project. There were two main reasons for this decision: 
+
+1. The team doesn't have the bandwidth (nor the desire) to develop a general purpose Kafka connector UI that would 
+be on par with some of the existing offerings (e.g. Lenses). So our UI would only ever be able to work with Debezium connectors specifically.
+2. Debezium Server is gaining popularity and we would like to offer a user friendly way of managing this flavour of Debezium as well. 
+Unfortunately, the deployment model of Debezium Server is very different from deploying Debezium as a connector. 
+
+## What's Next?
+As the previous paragraph mentioned the **current** UI, it's probably not a suprise that we did not give up on the idea. Part of the decision
+was to explore a possibility of creating a new UI which, while still focused exclusively on Debezium, would gradually support multiple deployment
+models. The idea is to start with Debezium Server deployed on Kubernetes, followed by bare metal deployment of Debezium Server.
+At some point in the future we would like to cycle back to Kafka Connect and support also the deployment and operation of Debezium as Kafka
+Connect connectors.
+
+++++
+<div class="imageblock centered-image">
+    <img src="/assets/images/2024-08-05-Debezium-ui-update/architecture.png" class="responsive-image" alt="Architecture">
+</div>
+++++
+
+## Designing the New UI
+One of the goals we defined for ourselves when designing the new platform was to simplify the understanding of what Debezium does.
+For this reason, we are going to abstract away from the underlying deployment model. Instead of focusing on servers and connectors,
+we want to allow our users to think about Debezium in terms of data. Thus the new generation of the UI should operate with data pipelines
+-- you define the source, the destination, and any data transformations.
+
+These can then be composed into a deployable pipeline. Depending on the target environment (Kafka Connect, Kubernetes, bare metal),
+an appropriate deployment will be used.
+
+++++
+<div class="imageblock centered-image">
+    <img src="/assets/images/2024-08-05-Debezium-ui-update/wireframe.png" class="responsive-image" alt="Initial Wireframe Design">
+</div>
+++++
+
+When pipeline is deployed to a Kubernetes or a bare metal machine
+
+- The Source is the configuration of the Debezium Source connector
+- Transformations are the usual SMTs
+- The Destination coresponds to the configuration of Debezium Server's Sink.
+
+When pipeline is deployed to Kafka Connect
+
+- The Source is the configuration of the Debezium Source connector
+- Transformations are the usual SMTs
+- The destination is always a Kafka topic 
+
+In the future, we could also allow our JDBC and MongoDB sink connectors to be used as destinations, allowing for truly end-to-end defined pipelines
+when Kafka Connect is targeted.
+
+## Where Do We Stand Right Now
+We are at the begining of this journey. Nevetheless, there is a rough PoC prototype ready for you to https://github.com/debezium/debezium-platform-conductor/tree/main?tab=readme-ov-file#running-the-compose-kind-kafka-example[examine].
+As already briefly mentioned, initially the plan is to target only Kubernetes as supported deployment environment, more specifically
+Debezium Server on Kubernetes. This choice allows us to take an advantage of our Debezium Operator.
+
+++++
+<div class="imageblock centered-image">
+    <img src="/assets/images/2024-08-05-Debezium-ui-update/screenshot_list_destionations.png" class="responsive-image" alt="Screenshot: Destination types list">
+</div>
+++++
+
+We intend to introduce configuration and feature support gradually. Thus the configuration is deliberately opinionated and
+simplistic -- currently all pipelines can only use ephemeral storage. In this early version, you must also set all configuration properties as simple key-value pairs. We intend to change this in the future, and as a next step, you can look forward to auto-completion of property names,
+and ultimately, fully specialized forms will be rendered.
+
+++++
+<div class="imageblock centered-image">
+    <img src="/assets/images/2024-08-05-Debezium-ui-update/screenshot_create_source.png" class="responsive-image" alt="Screenshot: Create new source">
+</div>
+++++
+
+You can review the current status of the codebase on GitHub:
+
+- https://github.com/debezium/debezium-platform-conductor/[Debezium Platform Conductor (Backend)]
+- https://github.com/debezium/debezium-platform-stage/[Debezium Platform Stage (Frontend)]
+
+## We need your help!
+At the end of this short report, we would like to ask you to try this early PoC and let us know your opinion.
+We would especially appreciate if you could let as know your answers to the following questions:
+
+- What features are a must for you?
+- What features would you consider nice to have?
+- What is your visual impression?  
+
+Thank you and expect to hear from us soon with more updates to come!
+