What is the main function of the Offset parameter in Kafka?

In Apache Kafka, the Offset parameter indicates the position of a message within a partition of a topic. The main function of Offset is to serve as a unique identifier for each message in the partition, allowing the consumer to track which messages have been read and which have not. Thus, Offset helps manage the order of message reading and ensures the ability to resume reading from the correct position after a restart or failure.

Example: if a consumer has read messages from offset 0 to 99, the next message read will have an offset of 100.