Karapace
Karapace is an Aiven-built open-source Schema Registry for Apache Kafka®, and provides a central repository to store and retrieve schemas. It consists of a Schema Registry and a REST API. All Kafka services on Aiven support both these features, and you can enable or disable them based on your requirements.
Karapace supports storing schemas in a central repository, which clients can access to serialize and deserialize messages. The schemas maintain their own version histories and you can check compatibility between versions.
Supported schema formats
Karapace supports the following schema formats:
| Format | Schema registration | Schema references |
|---|---|---|
| Avro | ✓ | ✓ |
| Protobuf | ✓ | ✓ |
| JSON Schema | ✓ | - |
Schema references allow you to register a schema that depends on one or more previously registered schemas, rather than inlining those definitions each time. Karapace supports Avro schema references from v6.1.0 onward. See Schema references in Karapace for details and examples.
Karapace REST provides a RESTful interface to your Apache Kafka cluster, allowing you to produce and consume messages and perform administrative cluster work using standard HTTP.
Karapace resources
- The Karapace schema registry that Aiven maintains and makes available for every Aiven for Apache Kafka service: https://karapace.io/
- GitHub repository