Details
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Bug
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Status: Open
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Major
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Resolution: Unresolved
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Description
Right now the Deserializer fromBytes method takes just a byte array, meaning that it doesn't know anything about where those bytes came from.
We have a use case with Avro messages coming from Kafka where we may be getting several different versions of the same schema (each different version coming from a different stream-partition). This works okay. However, in the same stream task, we're actually consuming from more than one type of Avro message and each of those types has that same situation.
Once we're in the process method we can take the generic record and poke it for its internal structure to see what type and version it is. At this point we can re-encode it if necessary to bring its schema version up to the latest before sending it on. However, this extra work is expensive and is dominating the time spent in the process method.
However, if at deserialization time we knew what SSP the message came from, we could provide the Avro GenericDatumReader the reader schema, thus saving the expensive re-encode step in the process method.
I imagine other systems could benefit from this extra info as well. The information is available in the IncomingMessageEnvelope when we call the deserializer, it's just not being passed in.
(A parallel argument applies to the toBytes method in the Serializer interface)