Schema Evolution

What is Schema Evolution?

Schema as the Foundation - What is a Schema?

Schema Changes as the Mechanism - What are Schema Changes? 

• Adding, deleting, or altering tables and columns: To accommodate new types of data or to streamline operations by removing outdated information.
• Modifying data types and constraints: To better reflect the nature of the data being stored or to enforce new rules on the data for integrity and accuracy.
• Adjusting relationships and indexes: To improve query performance and data retrieval efficiencies, or to change how data elements relate to each other.

Schema Evolution as the Process

• Planning and implementing changes with minimal disruption: Ensuring that the database remains operational during transitions, which might involve employing non-blocking schema changes or phased migrations.
• Versioning and compatibility management: Keeping track of schema versions and ensuring that new schema changes are compatible with existing data and applications. This might involve maintaining backward compatibility or planning for forward compatibility to future-proof the database.
• Testing and validation: Rigorously testing schema changes in controlled environments before full deployment to catch and rectify potential issues, thus preventing data corruption or application failures.
• Documentation and governance: Maintaining detailed records of schema changes, reasons behind them, and the processes used to implement them, ensuring that schema evolution is well-documented and governed according to best practices.

Common Use Cases for Schema Evolution

Schema Evolution in Data Warehouses:

• Dynamic Adaptation: Implementing changes quickly with minimal downtime to maintain high performance in data querying and reporting.
• Versioning: Utilizing schema versioning to manage different iterations of data structures, allowing users to query historical data effectively even as new changes are applied.
• Schema Flexibility: Allowing modifications to the schema without affecting existing data, enabling seamless integration of changes.

Schema Evolution in Data Lakehouse:

• Seamless Integration and Scalability: Data lakehouses must adeptly manage schema evolution to integrate new data sources and adjust existing data structures without significant disruptions. Apache Iceberg, Apache Hudi, and Delta Lake provide sophisticated, scalable solutions for schema evolution, accommodating increasing data volumes and complexity with robust flexibility.
  • Apache Iceberg excels in schema evolution with capabilities to add, rename, and delete columns, and update column types without impacting existing data. It also provides snapshot isolation between reads and writes, preventing schema conflicts and ensuring consistent schema evolution even in environments with high concurrency.
  • Apache Hudi offers robust support for complex schema evolutions, including transformations such as record-level inserts, updates, and deletions. It also handles complex change operations like upserts and deletes effectively, which are vital for evolving schemas in response to changes in data capture (CDC) scenarios.
  • Delta Lake maintains a detailed transaction log that not only tracks schema changes over time but also ensures each version of the schema is reproducible and auditable. This feature is crucial for robust versioning and rollback capabilities, allowing schemas to evolve in a controlled and auditable manner.
• Unified Metadata Management:Effective metadata management is essential in a data lakehouse for maintaining data accessibility and integrity as schemas evolve.
  • Apache Iceberg stores snapshot metadata, schema versions, and partition specs as part of the table metadata to ensure consistency and recoverability.
  • Apache Hudi offers a unified view of the table's timeline, tracking schema changes alongside data updates and deletions.
  • Delta Lake integrates directly with the Databricks platform, providing a seamless metadata management experience that supports schema enforcement and rollback through its Delta catalog.
• Analytical and Operational Efficiency: These technologies ensure that schema changes enhance, rather than hinder, both analytical capabilities and operational processes.
  • Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake both facilitate schema-on-read and schema-on-write capabilities, allowing data to be ingested in its raw form and structured for high-performance queries as needed.
  • Apache Hudi excels in environments requiring near-real-time data processing, offering mechanisms that merge schema changes into ongoing data streams effectively.
• Transactional Integrity and Consistency: Maintaining data consistency during schema changes is critical, especially in environments supporting transactional workloads.
  • Delta Lake ensures ACID properties across both data and metadata changes, providing a reliable foundation for transactional data integrity.
  • Apache Iceberg also supports ACID transactions to maintain consistency during schema updates, even in highly concurrent environments.
  • Apache Hudi incorporates multi-version concurrency control (MVCC), enabling it to handle concurrent writes and schema updates without data corruption.
• Incremental Processing: Incremental processing is key to supporting real-time data ingestion and processing, enhancing the responsiveness and agility of data lake analytics.
  • Apache Hudi excels in environments that require frequent updates and deletions, offering mechanisms like record-level insert, update, and delete capabilities within a data lake.
  • Delta Lake and Apache Iceberg both support merge, update, and delete operations in a scalable manner, enabling complex transformations and incremental processing without compromising data integrity.

Additional Use Cases for Schema Evolution:

• Real-Time Data Streaming: In environments where data is continuously streamed, like IoT systems, schema evolution must support real-time schema modifications to accommodate new device data or metrics without downtime.
• Multitenant Databases: For SaaS applications where a single database may serve multiple tenants, schema evolution needs to be managed in a way that allows individual customization while maintaining a core, standardized schema across clients.
• Legacy System Modernization: Upgrading legacy databases to modern systems often requires schema evolution to ensure that the new system can accommodate the old data formats and structures, facilitating a smooth transition.

Challenges of Schema Evolution

• Backward and Forward Compatibility: Ensuring that new schema changes are compatible both backward and forward can be challenging. It requires that systems can continue to operate correctly regardless of whether they are using the old or new schema.
• Data Migration: Applying changes often necessitates migrating data to fit the new schema, which can be resource-intensive and risky if not handled carefully.
• Performance Impacts: Schema changes can affect the performance of the database, especially if they require significant data transformation or re-indexing.
• Coordination Across Teams: Schema changes must be coordinated across different teams to prevent disruptions in development, deployment, and production environments.
• Version Control and Documentation: Managing schema versions and keeping comprehensive documentation updated can be cumbersome but is critical for maintaining system integrity and understanding changes over time.

Best Practices for Schema Evolution

• Schema Design: Begin with a robust schema design using a suitable data format such as JSON, Avro, or Parquet that supports schema evolution. Use meaningful and descriptive names, avoid complex structures, make fields nullable rather than using default values, and thoroughly document the schema and any changes.
• Version Control: Implement version control for schemas to track changes and maintain backward compatibility. This allows existing data to function with both the old and new schema, preventing data integrity issues.
• Schema Registry: Utilize a schema registry, a centralized service that manages schemas and their versions. This aids in enforcing schema compatibility rules, enabling schema discovery, and facilitating governance and compliance.
• Effective Testing: Rigorously test schema changes in a development or staging environment before applying them to production. This includes using metadata management to track and document changes.
• Data Governance: Establish clear policies and procedures for schema evolution to manage changes responsibly. This includes maintaining a data catalog that documents schema versions for different datasets, which aids in schema discovery for users and data consumers.
• Communication and Collaboration: Ensure open communication and collaboration among stakeholders to raise awareness of upcoming changes and their implications. This helps in preparing all affected parties for the transition and in minimizing disruptions.
• Schema Evolution Strategy: Adopt a schema evolution strategy that defines rules and policies on how to handle schema changes and their impact on data pipelines. This helps avoid data loss, corruption, or inconsistency, as well as minimize the effort and cost of adapting data sources and sinks to schema changes.
• Schema Validation: Perform schema validation to ensure data conforms to the expected schema, meets quality standards, and avoids anomalies or conflicts during data ingestion. Tools like Apache NiFi, Apache Beam, and Apache Spark can assist in this process.