Serialization (Avro, Protobuf, JSON)

Difference between Null and Ignore Deserializers

The Null deserializer will throw an exception if the corresponding message key or value is not null, whereas the Ignore deserializer will return null regardless of whether the data is null or something else.

With Avro, is there a performance difference between the specific vs generic approach? What is preferred from the .NET client?

Working with the specific classes is much simpler and you should prefer this where possible. Use GenericRecord in scenarios where you need to dynamically work with data of any type.

Performance should be roughly on par.

You should support protobuf and json across confluent platform in addition to Avro

We completely agree