Htykuut

So I have an avro record like so (call it v1):

record MyRecord {

    array<string> keywords;

}

I'd like to add a field caseSensitive with a default value of false (call it v2). The first approach I have is:

record MyRecord {

    array<string> keywords;

    boolean caseSensitive = false;

}

According to schema evolution, this is both backward and forward compatible because a reader with the new schema v2 reading a record that was encoded with old writer schema v1 will be able to fill this field with the default value and a reader with older schema v1 will be able to read a record encoded with the new writer schema v2 because it will just ignore the newly added field.

Another way to add this field is by adding a union type of null and boolean with a default value of null, like so:

record MyRecord {

    array<string> keywords;

    union{null, boolean} caseSensitive = null;

}

This is also backward and forward compatible. I can see that sometimes one would want to use the 2nd approach if there is no clear default value for a field (such as name, address, etc.). But given my use case with a clear default value, I'm thinking of going with the first solution. My question is: is there any other concerns that I'm missing here?