On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 3:37 PM, Jeff Kolesky <[email protected]> wrote: > Has there been discussion of the need fot this type of tool? Would other > people find it useful?
I have not seen this discussed, but I can see the utility. One could automatically check new schemas for compatibility with prior versions before using them, to ensure that both old and new data can be read with the new schema. This would require checking that any added fields have default values specified. Related is the ability to tell if an old schema can be used to read data written with a newer. This would require that any removed fields have a default value specified. In general, to ensure readability in both cases, one should always provide a default value for every field. So a method that traversed a schema and verified that each field has a default value might suffice. Doug
