Introducing Solace Schema Registry (Beta)

This past week, our developer advocate Aaron Lee spoke with a couple of our product managers during his Office Hours podcast about the beta release of an exciting addition to PubSub+ Platform: Solace Schema Registry! Aaron is one of our most entertaining personalities (look out Joe Rogan!), so be sure to check out his stuff over on YouTube – and don’t forget to like and subscribe! You’ll be glad you did.

In any case, this latest Office Hours addresses our new schema registry with a fair amount of technical depth for architects and developers who need it, so for those who want the short version, we are capturing the details in this blog post, with timestamped links so you can watch just the part that matters to you.

What is a Schema Registry?

Schema registries help organizations maintain consistency in their data structures. As applications become more and more decoupled and distributed this becomes critical for:

1. Data Consistency: Ensures that producers and consumers agree on the data format.
2. Interoperability: Allows different systems to communicate effectively.
3. Schema Evolution: Supports versioning and compatibility checks as schemas change over time.
4. Data Governance: Centralizes schema management for better control and auditing.

It is particularly important in event-driven systems because the event brokers that make up event meshes are payload agnostic, which introduces the need for payload format awareness.

Key Features of Solace Schema Registry

Centralized Schema Management

Solace Schema Registry offers a single source of truth for all your schema definitions. This centralization simplifies the process of managing schemas across multiple applications.

Support for Multiple Formats

Solace Schema Registry will support various schema formats, including Avro, JSON Schema, and Protobuf. This flexibility allows developers to choose the format that best suits their needs. For the beta, the first format being supported in JCSMP.

Versioning and Compatibility

With built-in versioning, Solace Schema Registry allows for backward and forward compatibility, enabling seamless transitions as schemas evolve over time.

How Solace Schema Registry Works

Here’s a step by step look at how Solace Schema Registry works.

1. “Governor” defines valid schema via Registry UI
2. Publisher provides its schema subject to the registry
3. If valid, registry returns schema ID
4. Publisher serializer adds schema ID
   and schema metadata to message
5. Consumer provides schema ID to registry
6. Registry responds with matching schema
7. Consumer de-serializer uses schema to map message metadata to variables
8. (optional) schema registries synchronize schema

To see the presentation of this in the video click here.

SERDES in Context of a Schema Registry

Serializer/Deserializer (SERDES) is a key technical concept in a schema registry. Simply put…

1. Serialization means converting the application’s data objects from their native format into a binary format suitable for transmission or storage. For example, a serializer might take a Java object and convert it to Avro binary format using a schema from the registry
2. Deserialization is converting the binary data back into its original format for application processing.

It is important because each different API and payload format pair needs its own SERDES. To understand the SERDES rollout from Solace, jump to the product roadmap video section here.

See it in Action

Demo

To see how this is done in a live demonstration – jump to this section of the video is a demo of Schema Registry in Action.

Codelab

To get started, simply visit the Codelab!  If you are a customer of Solace, you will simply need to login to your downloads to access the package. For others, on page 2 you will see the instructions on how to get access.

And don’t forget to join Solace Community, where you can find resources and documentation to help you on everything Solace – including any questions you may have on integrating Schema Registry into your applications. This post by product manager Rob Tomkins is a good place to start.

Conclusion

Solace Schema Registry is a game-changer for organizations looking to deliver data governance and data management. By providing a centralized, flexible, and robust solution for schema management and distribution it helps ensure that your integrations across applications and clouds are not only efficient but also error-free and governed.

And this is just the beginning. As we move from beta to release (and beyond) Solace will deliver its GA version for self-managed customers, a cloud managed service available from Solace PubSub+ Cloud Console, and seamless integration with design-time and run time inside PubSub+ Event Portal.