CDC
Change Data Capture
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
CDC is the acronym for Change Data Capture — streaming database changes as events in real-time. See the full 'Change Data Capture' entry for details. People say 'CDC' way more than the full name.
Real Talk
CDC (Change Data Capture) refers to the process of identifying and capturing row-level changes to database tables and delivering them as events. It reads the database's transaction log rather than polling tables. Commonly implemented with Debezium (Kafka Connect), AWS DMS, or built-in database features like PostgreSQL logical replication.
When You'll Hear This
"Set up CDC with Debezium to stream Postgres changes to Kafka." / "CDC replaces our hourly ETL batch job with real-time data sync."
Related Terms
Change Data Capture
Change Data Capture (CDC) watches your database for changes and streams them as events.
Event-Driven Architecture
Event-Driven Architecture is like a gossip network. When something happens (order placed!), it broadcasts the news.
Write-Ahead Log
The Write-Ahead Log (WAL) is the database's diary. Before changing any actual data, the database first writes what it's about to do in this log.