Thrift

The Event-Driven model heavily relies on the QUALITY of events.

Good quality events are:

• explicitly defined via contracts
• have comments
• support evolution with backward and forward compatibility
• support code generation
• breaking changes are well thought

Good events are implemented using the right tools:

• use Avro/Thrift/Protobuf formats and never use JSON!
• use the right event broker (such as Pulsar)

Good events are designed to:

• contain all the info needed by consumers
• use separate streams for each event type
• use the right data types for their fields (don’t use string for numbers, use enums, etc.)
• don’t use type field and fields based on it
• be as small as possible
• consider requirements from consumers
• not just signals - they contain all info needed by consumers

These topics are disclosed in the Chapter 3 of the book we are currently studying:

Earlier this year the book club of our company has studied excellent book:

Martin Kleppmann - Designing Data-Intensive Applications

This is the best book I have read about building complex scalable software systems. 💪

As usually I prepared an overview and mind-map.

Chapter 4:

• What is evolvability. Backward and Forward compatibility
• Approaches to encode data:
  • JSON, XML, and their binary variants
  • Thrift and Protobuf
  • Apache Avro
• Models of data flow
  • Through databases
  • Through services: REST, SOAP, RPC and the future
  • Through message brokers - when they are better and when they are not

Much more details in the mind-map: