# Avro Alternative Becuase Of No Write Access to Broker

**URL:** <https://forum.confluent.io/t/avro-alternative-becuase-of-no-write-access-to-broker/2744>\
**Category:** Kafka Connect\
**Created:** [15 September 2021 03:48 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/avro-alternative-becuase-of-no-write-access-to-broker/2744 "2021-09-15T03:48:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![stcook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@stcook](https://forum.confluent.io/u/stcook)\
**Post date:** [15 September 2021 03:48 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/avro-alternative-becuase-of-no-write-access-to-broker/2744/1 "2021-09-15T03:48:18Z")

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Message: Simple JSON message (no schema).

I worked through the tutorial " Kafka Connect in Action: JDBC Sink" on YouTube with success; however, in my particular use case, I do not have write permission to the broker in order to create a new topic (i.e. Avro stream). I am only allowed to consume the data as it is (simple JSON message/no schema).

Is there a Connect alternative that allows me to create a schema (as in the tutorial using KSQLDB) and append it to the message WITHOUT creating a new topic on the broker?

Thank you.

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**Author:** ![rmoff](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.confluent.io/rmoff/32/3_2.png) [@rmoff](https://forum.confluent.io/u/rmoff)\
**Post date:** [15 September 2021 08:41 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/avro-alternative-becuase-of-no-write-access-to-broker/2744/2 "2021-09-15T08:41:04Z")

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Hi @stcook, welcome to the community 🙂

So that I understand correctly:

- You have a stream of plain JSON data on a Kafka topic
- You want to stream it to a database using the JDBC Sink
- You don’t have the option to add a schema and reserialise the data because you don’t have permission to write the data back to another topic on the cluster

If that’s correct, then I think you might be a bit stuck. The topic that the Kafka Connect sink consumes _requires_ a schema to be present. So you’re going to either need to get permission to write a new topic to the cluster, or have the source topic written using a serialisation format that includes a schema (Avro / Protobuf / JSON Schema).

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**Author:** ![stcook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@stcook](https://forum.confluent.io/u/stcook)\
**Post date:** [15 September 2021 12:46 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/avro-alternative-becuase-of-no-write-access-to-broker/2744/3 "2021-09-15T12:46:07Z")

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@rmoff , thank you for such a quick response.

Unfortunately, you’re spot on. This case is one where the Kafka service is out of my purview and I can only “subscribe” to the topic.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/confluentcommunity/original/1X/c49438c90c9df282e9996fdf6971be890c71b65a.svg) [@system](https://forum.confluent.io/u/system)\
**Post date:** [22 September 2021 12:46 UTC](https://forum.confluent.io/t/avro-alternative-becuase-of-no-write-access-to-broker/2744/4 "2021-09-22T12:46:39Z")

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