In the names section of the specification ( https://avro.apache.org/docs/current/spec.html#names) it currently states the following:
References to previously defined names are as in the latter two cases above: if they contain a dot they are a fullname, if they do not contain a dot, the namespace is the namespace of the enclosing definition. However, it seems currently the Java specification does not consider the enclosing namespace. For example, see the following ticket: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-3118. The subrecord "row" is being specified as a null namespace so the fullname is just "row". However, the "field_b" in the original schema has type "row" and according to the spec it doesn't have a dot in the name and so it should use the enclosing namespace of "my_ns" and should have the fullname of "my_ns.row". These two fullnames do not match and so the schema should fail to parse since "my_ns.row" is not defined. Changing the Java code to conform to the specification would be a breaking change. Alternatively, the specification could be changed to say the following: References to previously defined names are always treated as fullnames. If the reference does not have a dot then it is considered to have a null namespace. What do others think should be done? -Scott
