What is Event Driven Architecture (EDA)
Imagine a party where different guests are arriving at different times, some are leaving early, and some are staying until the end. In such a situation, you as the host wouldn't want to stand at the door waiting for each guest to arrive or leave. Instead, you can use an event-driven approach where you place a "guest book" at the entrance and exit. Whenever a guest arrives or leaves, they can sign the guest book, and you will be notified. This way, you can focus on other aspects of the party while still keeping track of all the guests' activities.
Event-driven architecture (EDA) is a design approach that uses events as the primary means of communication between different components of a system. Just like the guest book at a party, events represent changes in the state of the system and are published and consumed asynchronously by different components. These components can operate independently and are not aware of each other's existence, which makes the system more scalable, flexible, and resilient.
This approach allows for a loosely-coupled and asynchronous communication between different parts of the system, which makes it more flexible, scalable, and resilient. For example, a weather monitoring system that sends alerts to users when there is a change in weather conditions can benefit from an event-driven architecture. When a change in weather is detected, an event is generated and sent to the event router, which then routes the event to the appropriate users for action. The event-driven architecture is also well-suited for real-time systems such as IoT, online gaming, financial trading, and real-time analytics.
Ways to Implement EDA
Event-driven architecture (EDA) can be implemented in a variety of ways, depending on the specific requirements of the system. Here are a few common ways to implement EDA:
Using a message broker: A message broker, such as Apache Kafka or RabbitMQ, can be used to implement an event-driven architecture. Producers can publish events to topics or queues, and consumers can subscribe to one or more topics or queues to receive the events. The message broker provides the messaging infrastructure that allows for the production and consumption of events, and the storage of events for later processing.
Using an event hub: An event hub is a centralized message bus that allows different components of the system to communicate with each other using events. Producers can publish events to the event hub, and consumers can subscribe to events from the event hub.
Using an event store: An event store is a database that is optimized for storing and querying events. Producers can store events in the event store, and consumers can query the event store for events.
Using serverless computing: Serverless computing allows for the creation of event-driven systems without the need for provisioning and managing servers. Producers can send events to a serverless function, which then triggers another serverless function to process the event. Google’s cloud function, Azure function and AWS Lamda is few of the example of serverless options
It is important to remember that the way to implement event-driven architecture depends on the specific needs of the project. Sometimes a combination of different methods is the best solution.
One popular way to implement event-driven architecture is by using a message broker. A message broker, like Apache Kafka or RabbitMQ, can be used to set up an event-driven architecture.
Apache Kafka Vs Rabbit MQ
Apache Kafka and RabbitMQ are both messaging systems, but they have some key differences in terms of their design, architecture, and use cases.
Kafka vs Rabbit MQ
Summary
Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) is a way of designing a software system that separates its components and allows them to communicate through events. These events signify changes in the system's state and are consumed by components asynchronously. By decoupling the components, they can function independently and evolve separately, making the system more scalable and flexible. Although EDA is not the solution for every system, it can provide significant benefits when used properly. It is considered a crucial component of microservices deployment.