Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Debezium writes them to a side-topic, which isn't obviously synchronized with the data topics That's unfortunate. It seems like it would be ideal to feed schema changes through the same topic, so that the ordering is defined without the usual distributed-system hilarity.
Agreed! We plan to contribute to the Debezium project over the next months along these lines. We’ll have more to say on this shortly!
Nice, looking forward to your contributions. Let me know if you'd like to discuss anything upfront. On a general note, have you considered to rely on the schema of change events themselves (inline JSON schema, or Avro schema in a registry)? Not all connectors provide the separate schema history topic, you won't have to parse DDL and the synchronization issue is avoided at all. Happy to discuss in more detail.
Disclaimer: I'm the Debezium lead.