api-guidelines/asynchronous-api-guidelines/kafka-asynchronous-guidelines/f_schema_data_evolution/forward-compatibility.md

Forward Compatibility

Also two variants here:

• FORWARD - Consumers with previous version of the schema (X - 1) can read data produced by Producers with a new schema version (X)
• FORWARD_TRANSITIVE - Consumers with any previous version of the schema (X - 1, X - 2, ...) can read data produced by Producers with a new schema version (X)

The operations that preserve forward compatibility are:

• Adding a new field
  • Consumers will ignore the fields that are not defined in their schema version
• Deleting optional fields (with default values)
  • Consumers will use the default value for the missing fields defined in their schema version