Log-Based CDC: Debezium and the WAL

Debezium is the de facto standard for log-based CDC. It connects to the database's replication slot (PostgreSQL) or binlog (MySQL), reads committed changes, and publishes them as structured events to Kafka topics. One topic per table. Each event contains the before and after state of the row, plus metadata. Debezium Change Event Structure Why Log-Based CDC Is Non-Invasive