Event streaming as a source of truth

Description

One of the most interesting and provocative patterns to face the software architecture community is the use of event streaming as a source of truth—a pattern where replayable logs, like Apache Kafka, are used for both communication as well as event storage, incorporating the retentive properties of a database in a system designed to share data across many teams, clouds, and geographies.

Ben Stopford believes this concept to be transformative. Such a bold claim should of course be met with a healthy degree of skepticism, but the interesting thing about communication patterns is that their value comes from often subtle, systemic effects, particularly where humans are involved. You will be familiar with these already: email, Twitter, Slack, and Facebook are all conceptually similar forms of communication but display very different dynamics in practice, yet zeroing in on exactly why these tools operate and feel so different is rarely as simple as it may seem.

Join Ben to explore the event streaming pattern and discover the systemic effects it has on the architectures we build around it, helping you see where the value really lies. Ben examines the relationship between events, event sourcing, and stream processing, as well as the concept of a database unbundled or turned inside out. He also explores how the pattern encourages subtler systemic effects: easier evolution, a more ephemeral view on data, and systems that seamlessly span departments, cloud providers, and geographies.