I'm working on a project at work. I'm curious if it is possible to implement Kafka on a database without CDC. (CDC isn't turned on all the time on it) Can't find any resources online that discuss other options. Is it possible to feed the data directly into kafka? For instance write C# code to read data base and then plug into Kafka which acts as the connector?
Have a watch of this, it explains everything :-)
https://www.confluent.io/kafka-summit-ny19/no-more-silos-integrating-db-into-apache-kafka
tl;dr : You could write some code, but the question is really should you write some code :) Almost certainly not. You can use "proper" CDC to get events from the transaction log, or you can use 'query-based CDC' with the JDBC Source connector to just poll new records. The pros and cons of each are discussed in the above talk.