GitHub user davek2 opened a pull request: https://github.com/apache/kafka/pull/1419
Allocate 2 attribute bits to signal payload format This documentation update proposes a mechanism to signal the serialization used for the message payload, resolving issue https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KAFKA-3744. No change is made to the message structure; two previously-reserved bits in the attribute byte now have defined values, and for one of four cases the key field is defined to be a JSON object. No change is required to messaging software. No change is required to existing producer and consumer clients that use pre-agreed payload serialization. Misc notes: 1) Only one attribute bit would be needed if serialization were always signalled using the key field. But it seems preferable to define two common serializations that do not have any dependency on the key field. Selection of the common formats is arbitrary; text and avro seem reasonable but any two could be used instead. 2) The compression attribute uses three bits but only two are defined. If the intent is to use all three bits for compression the undefined values should be listed as reserved; if not, the timestamp attribute can slide down to bit 2 and serialization to bits 3~4, leaving bits 5~7 reserved. 3) It's unclear why message field 6 should be called "key" - a variable-length field is more likely to be described as "attributes" or "metadata", and 1-byte field 3 would be called "flags" instead of "attributes". 4) Field 8 is called "payload" under message format and "value" under on-disk format. Changed to payload in both places. You can merge this pull request into a Git repository by running: $ git pull https://github.com/davek2/kafka trunk Alternatively you can review and apply these changes as the patch at: https://github.com/apache/kafka/pull/1419.patch To close this pull request, make a commit to your master/trunk branch with (at least) the following in the commit message: This closes #1419 ---- commit 1d88b8d48cdfe67989bebf239f7588ca24e961b6 Author: Joe <dav...@hotmail.com> Date: 2016-05-24T00:32:04Z Allocate 2 attribute bits for payload format ---- --- If your project is set up for it, you can reply to this email and have your reply appear on GitHub as well. If your project does not have this feature enabled and wishes so, or if the feature is enabled but not working, please contact infrastructure at infrastruct...@apache.org or file a JIRA ticket with INFRA. ---