Batch ETL from OLTP databases is a liability. CDC turns your source DB into a stream of events — the truth, in order, near real-time.
The topology
Debezium → Kafka → Schema Registry → Flink or Structured Streaming → Delta. Each hop is idempotent, replayable, and observable.
Handle schema changes
Enforce backward compatibility at the registry. Additive changes only in production. Breaking changes go through a new topic version.
CREATE TABLE orders_silver USING DELTA AS
SELECT * FROM stream('orders_cdc')
WHERE __op != 'd'