In the context of Apicurio, a registry is a runtime system (server) that stores a specific set of artifacts (files). At its core, a registry provides the ability to add, update, and remove the artifacts from the store, typically via a remote API of some kind (often a REST API).
The key use-case for the Apicurio community, an API Registry is a system that allows users to register their API designs (e.g. OpenAPI or AsyncAPI files) so that potential API consumers can do the following:
In the messaging and event streaming world, data that are published to topics and queues often must be serialized or validated using a Schema (e.g. Apache Avro, JSON Schema, or Google protocol buffers). Schemas can be packaged in each application, but it is often a better architectural pattern to instead register them in an external system and then referenced from each application. This allows the following: