Re: does anyone use IDL ?

["Driesprong, Fokko" <fo...@driesprong.frl>]

Hi Rog,

I know a few companies that use IDL, but it isn't as popular as just AVSC.
It depends on your use case, if you have a very hierarchical schema, then
it might be nice to use. If you have a simple message that you want to pass
around, then only a avsc might do the trick.

Cheers, Fokko

Op vr 19 jun. 2020 om 13:00 schreef roger peppe <ro...@gmail.com>:

> Hi,
>
> Because the syntax is so much more convenient, we thought it would be a
> good idea to switch from using the raw JSON AVSC format to using IDL (avdl
> files).
>
> Almost immediately, I discovered three quite significant bugs:
>
> 1. you can't use default values for record-typed fields:
>    https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-2867
> 2. you can't specify default values on enum-typed fields:
>    https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-2866
> 3. you can't specify arrays, maps or unions that contain some of the
> logical types mentioned in the specification
>   https://issues.apache.org/jira/projects/AVRO/issues/AVRO-2864
>
> I couldn't find any existing issues, and the first two in particular feel
> basic enough that surely if there were a significant number of people using
> IDL, they'd have at least reported them...
>
> The second issue in particular is a real problem for us: it *can* be
> worked around by using a union with null, but that has significant
> usability and performance implications.
>
> So my underlying question is: is it a bad idea for us to be using IDL?
> Perhaps there are other, more significant issues that we haven't
> encountered yet that mean that people haven't decided to use it (and hence
> haven't encountered bugs like these). If so, it would be good to know!
>
>   cheers,
>     rog.
>
>