Schema Evolution and Compatibility

February 22, 2026

Schema-Evolution-Design, Compatibility-Mode-Selection, Schema-Registry-Operations, Breaking-Change-Detection

Schema-Evolution, Avro, Protobuf, Json-Schema, Schema-Registry, Backwards-Compatibility, Api-Versioning, Confluent

Confluent-Schema-Registry, Apicurio, Avro, Protobuf, Buf

Schema Evolution and Compatibility#

Every service contract changes over time. New fields get added, old fields get removed, types change. In a monolith, you update the schema and redeploy. In microservices, producers and consumers deploy independently. A schema change that breaks consumers causes production failures. Schema evolution rules and tooling exist to prevent this.

Compatibility Modes#

There are four compatibility modes. Understanding them is essential for operating any schema registry.

gRPC for Service-to-Service Communication

February 22, 2026

Microservices

Intermediate, Advanced

Grpc-Implementation, Protobuf-Design, Service-Communication, Error-Handling

Grpc, Protobuf, Streaming, Load-Balancing, Health-Checking, Deadlines, Error-Handling, Service-Communication

Protoc, Grpcurl, Grpc-Health-Probe, Buf, Grpc-Go, Grpc-Python

gRPC for Service-to-Service Communication#

gRPC is a high-performance RPC framework that uses HTTP/2 for transport and Protocol Buffers (protobuf) for serialization. For service-to-service communication within a microservices architecture, gRPC offers significant advantages over REST: strongly typed contracts, efficient binary serialization, streaming support, and code generation in every major language.

Why gRPC for Internal Services#

REST with JSON is the standard for public APIs. For internal service-to-service calls, gRPC is often the better choice.