Avro
Avro is a data serialization system and remote procedure call (RPC) framework developed within the Apache Hadoop project. It provides a compact binary data format, rich data structures, and a schema-based approach for serializing data, enabling efficient data exchange between systems and languages. Avro is commonly used in big data ecosystems for storing and transmitting structured data, with built-in support for schema evolution.
Developers should learn Avro when working in distributed systems, particularly in big data environments like Hadoop, Kafka, or Spark, where efficient and schema-aware data serialization is critical for performance and interoperability. It is ideal for use cases involving data pipelines, log aggregation, and real-time streaming, as its compact format reduces storage and network overhead while supporting backward and forward compatibility through schema evolution.