What it is: A consumer is an application that reads and processes records from a Kinesis data stream.

What it’s for:

• Process streaming events in real time (analytics, alerts, ETL).
• Build multiple downstream systems from the same stream (fan-out).

Key ideas:

• Consumers typically read from shards.
• You can have multiple consumers reading the same stream.

Exam cues:

• “multiple applications need the same stream” → multiple consumers.

Hard words:

• *consumer* /kənˈsuːmər/: bên tiêu thụ (bên đọc dữ liệu)
• *downstream* /ˌdaʊnˈstriːm/: hệ phía sau
• *fan-out* /fæn aʊt/: tỏa ra nhiều nhánh