Kafka is essentially commit logs, which are at the core of any traditional database engines. Streaming is just turning the gut of DB inside out (mostly for scalability reasons), while DB is wrapped up commit logs that provides higher level functionalities (ACID, Transactions, etc.). It's two sides of the same coin, yin and yang of the same thing... But on the practical side of things, yes, if what you needed more are indeed what's described in this article, your life would be easier with a traditional DB.