Self-hosting Apicurio Registry for Kafka schemas
Running Apicurio Registry as the schema registry for Kafka: storage choices, the Confluent-compatible API for existing serializers, content rules, authentication and high availability.
Apache Kafka schema registry and data contracts
Managing message schemas for self-hosted Kafka: open-source registries, licensing, formats, compatibility rules, migrating registries and data contracts between teams.
Karapace as an open-source Confluent Schema Registry replacement
Using Karapace for schemas and REST access: API compatibility with Confluent Schema Registry, supported formats, normalization limits, storage in a Kafka topic and when Apicurio fits better.
Confluent Schema Registry licensing for self-hosted Kafka
What the Confluent Community License means for Schema Registry on your own Kafka: allowed internal use, the competing-service restriction, Apache 2.0 serializer modules and open-source replacements.
Avro vs Protobuf vs JSON Schema for Kafka messages
Picking a serialization format for Kafka topics: schema evolution rules, payload size, language support, registry support across Apicurio, Karapace and Confluent, and mixing formats across teams.
Schema compatibility modes for Kafka topics
Choosing compatibility rules per subject: backward, forward and full, their transitive variants, deploy order for producers and consumers, and why transitive modes suit consumers that lag several versions.
Migrating from Confluent Schema Registry to Apicurio or Karapace
Moving schemas off Confluent Schema Registry: exporting subjects and versions, keeping schema IDs that serialized records reference, the Apicurio ccompat API and Karapace compatibility, and switching clients.
Data contracts for Kafka topics
Agreeing what producers may publish: schemas as contracts, compatibility rules, ownership metadata, review in CI and handling breaking changes with new topics instead of silent changes.
