EDA Panel • R. Sethi, S. Brisals, L. Mezzalira, M. Gasch, J. Beswick & E. Johnson • GOTO 2024

Event-driven architecture (EDA) is particularly effective for integrating different systems, connecting legacy applications, and enabling decoupled communication between services

Key challenges in EDA implementation include:

• Observability across distributed systems
• Managing eventual consistency
• Properly defining boundaries between services
• Handling sensitive data securely

Best practices for EDA adoption:

• Start small with bounded contexts
• Consider team maturity and cognitive load
• Use event storming for boundary identification
• Implement proper dead letter queues for failed events
• Focus on contract design between services

EDAs may not be suitable for:

• Highly latency-sensitive operations
• Gaming systems requiring instant responses
• Simple CRUD operations
• Applications completely within single bounded context

Success factors for EDA implementations:

• Strong organizational support
• Clear understanding of business domains
• Proper team structure following team topologies
• Established center of excellence
• Incremental adoption approach

Technical considerations:

• Careful handling of sensitive data in events
• Proper event storage and dead letter queue implementation
• Balance between sync and async operations
• Integration patterns with existing systems
• Event schema design and evolution

Common use cases include:

• Financial services integration
• Document processing workflows
• Salesforce integrations
• Legacy system modernization
• Cross-service data propagation