On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 11:40 PM, Christophe Taton < [email protected]> wrote:
> Well, I guess one can always handle such things externally to Avro. > This needn't be done externally. When an extension schema is encountered, the schema compiler can generate Object references, the DatumWriter can write the schema signature and encode the object, and the DatumReader can locate the referenced schema and create and deserialize the appropriate object. This behavior could be compatibly added to the existing generic, specific and reflect representations, since the extension schema is in Avro's namespace and should thus not conflict with any user schema. So this could be implemented compatibly. Until support is added in other languages (Python, C, C++, etc.) these objects would be opaque, but no matter how the feature is implemented it will require implementation work in each language. Doug
