"Initial snapshots are a core feature of Debezium: when setting up a new CDC connector, existing tables can be scanned in order to export their full state to consumers, before starting to capture changes from the transaction log. While this works great in general, a few questions came up again and again in the Debezium community over time: * How to re-snapshot just a single table? * How to pause and resume long-running snapshots? * How to run snapshots in parallel to reading changes from the log? All this, and more, becomes possible with the notion of incremental snapshots. In this session you'll learn how this innovative scheme of interleaving snapshot queries and log-based change events works under the hood and how it solves common tasks when running CDC pipelines. We'll also discuss advanced topics like parallelising snapshots and customising snapshot contents."

1. Image © Nicolas Buffler https://flic.kr/p/jpWcWD (CC BY 2.0)
Debezium Snapshots Revisited!
Gunnar Morling
Senior Staff Software Engineer, Decodable
@gunnarmorling

3. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Agenda

4. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
● Software engineer at Decodable
● Former project lead of Debezium
● kcctl 🧸, JfrUnit, ModiTect,
MapStruct
● Spec Lead for Bean Validation 2.0
● Java Champion
Gunnar Morling

5. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Recap – Debezium
Log-Based Change Data Capture

6. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Snapshotting
Why Is It Needed?
● Need to backfill data, but don’t
have all TX logs
● Solution: scan data once before
streaming
● Emit READ event for each record

7. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Snapshotting
Classic Approach – General Idea
● Capture current
position in transaction
log
● Scan all relevant tables
● Start streaming

8. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Snapshotting
Key Configuration Options
● snapshot.mode (initial, never, schema_only_recovery)
● snapshot.select.statement.overrides
● snapshot.max.threads

9. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Snapshotting
Limitations of Classic Approach
● Can’t update filter list

10. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Snapshotting
Limitations of Classic Approach
● Can’t update filter list
● Can’t pause & resume long-running snapshots

11. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Snapshotting
Limitations of Classic Approach
● Can’t update filter list
● Can’t pause & resume long-running snapshots
● Can’t stream changes until snapshot completed

12. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Snapshotting
Limitations of Classic Approach
● Can’t update filter list
● Can’t pause & resume long-running snapshots
● Can’t stream changes until snapshot completed
● Can’t re-snapshot selected tables

13. Incremental
Snapshots
© Karen Blaha https://flic.kr/p/aeuPys (CC BY-SA 2.0)

14. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
The Paper
● “DBLog: A Watermark Based
Change-Data-Capture
Framework”, by Andreas Andreakis
and Ioannis Papapanagiotou
● Key idea: interleave snapshot events
and events from TX log
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.12597v1.pdf

15. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
General Idea

16. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
Windowing via Watermarks

17. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
Buffer Processing

18. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
Buffer Processing

19. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
Semantics
● No guarantee for snapshot (read) events for all records
● May receive update or delete without prior insert/read
● May receive read and update/delete
● What is guaranteed: complete data set after snapshot

20. Demo
© Wall Boat https://flic.kr/p/Y6zkmX (Public Domain)

21. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
Connector Offsets

22. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
MySQL Read-Only Snapshots
● Write access to DB may be not desirable

23. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
Signalling Channels
● Database table
● Kafka topic
● JMX
● Custom
id 924e3ff8-2245-43ca-ba77-2af9af02fa07
type log, {execute|pause|resume|stop}-snapshot
value { "data-collections": ["schema1.table1", "schema2.table2"],
"type":"incremental",
"additional-condition":"color=blue" }

24. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
Notifications

25. #Debezium + #ApacheFlink | @gunnarmorling
Comparison

26. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
Benefits
● Can update filter list ✅

27. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
Benefits
● Can update filter list ✅
● Long-running snapshots can be paused/resumed ✅

28. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
Benefits
● Can update filter list ✅
● Long-running snapshots can be paused/resumed ✅
● Can stream changes before snapshot completed ✅

29. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Incremental Snapshotting
Benefits
● Can update filter list ✅
● Long-running snapshots can be paused/resumed ✅
● Can stream changes before snapshot completed ✅
● Can re-snapshot selected tables ✅

31. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
● Incremental Snapshots in Debezium
https://debezium.io/blog/2021/10/07/incremental-snapshots/
● Read-only Incremental Snapshots for MySQL
https://debezium.io/blog/2022/04/07/read-only-incremental-snapshots/
● Flink CDC
https://ververica.github.io/flink-cdc-connectors/
Resources

32. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
● Debezium & Kafka Connect – Ask the Experts
With Chris Cranford (Red Hat) and Chris Egerton (Aiven)
Sep 27, 2:30 PM
● Change Stream Processing with Debezium and Apache Flink
With Robert Metzger (Decodable)
Sep 27, 5:30 PM, Dremio Office
https://www.meetup.com/sf-big-analytics/events/294068331/
Upcoming

33. #DebeziumSnapshotting @gunnarmorling
Q & A
gunnar@decodable.co
@gunnarmorling
📧
Thank You!