**Why offset management matters**: Dictates delivery semantics and recovery. **Options**: (1) Kafka native (`enable.auto.commit` or manual); (2) External store for exactly-once with transactional sink. **Spark**: Checkpoint directory stores offsets; exactly-once when sink is idempotent. **Scalability trade-offs**: Auto-commit = at-least-once; manual = control. External = transactional consistency. **Cost implications**: Wrong semantics = duplicates or data loss....
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