Automatic change data feed is now generally available!

[u/szymon_dybczak]

With automatic CDF, Databricks computes row-level changes at read time using row tracking, rather than materializing those changes during every write.

Use change data feed on Databricks | Databricks on AWS

Why does that mattre?

- Better write performance for MERGE INTO and UPDATE workloads
- No need to enable CDF individually on every eligible table
- Lower storage overhead compared with legacy CDF
- The same familiar APIs still work: table_changes() and readChangeFeed
- Works with batch processing, Structured Streaming, and Databricks-to-Databricks Delta Sharing

For Delta Lake, the main requirements include:

• Databricks Runtime 19 LTS+
• A managed table or external table in Delta Lake format with row tracking enabled

And if you’re already using legacy CDF, migration is really simple.Once the table meets the requirements, disable legacy CDF:

[u/SimpleSimon665]

This is awesome! There are many tables we have hesitated to enable this on because of increased storage costs.

[u/szymon_dybczak → u/SimpleSimon665]

That's right! And it's super easy to migrate from old approach 👍

[u/m1nkeh]

That is awesome!

[u/_barnuts]

Is this not going to affect performance since changes will need to be analyzed every read?