Change Data Capture
Capturing row-level changes in a database and streaming them to other systems in real time. Debezium reads the write-ahead log and publishes changes to Kafka.
What is Change Data Capture?
Capturing row-level changes in a database and streaming them to other systems in real time. Debezium reads the write-ahead log and publishes changes to Kafka.
Change Data Capture is a advanced concept that sits in the Stream & Batch Processing area of system design. Engineers reach for it whenever they need to reason about real-world trade-offs in that space — not just for textbook correctness, but because real production systems at companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Google make these decisions every day.
If you want to go deeper than this definition — with diagrams, code, and a quiz to lock it in — work through the "Change Data Capture" lesson linked below. It walks through the why, the mechanism, the trade-offs, and how the giants actually use it in production.
Learn Change Data Capture in depth
Full interactive lesson with diagrams, code examples, real-world references, and a quiz.
Open the Change Data Capture lessonRelated lessons
Lessons that touch on Change Data Capture as part of a larger topic.
See also
Related glossary terms you might want to look up next.
Write-Ahead Log
A technique where changes are written to a log before being applied to the database. Ensures durability and crash recovery.
Kafka
A distributed event streaming platform that handles millions of events per second. Used by LinkedIn, Netflix, and Uber for real-time data pipelines.
Event Sourcing
Storing every state change as an immutable event instead of just the current state. You can rebuild any past state by replaying events.