sethdford Event Sourcing
Build auditable systems by storing complete history of state changes as immutable events rather than current values.
Context
You are designing a system requiring auditability, temporal analysis, or replay capability. Event sourcing provides complete history and enables powerful event-driven architectures. Read domain requirements and existing event-driven patterns.
Domain Context
Based on Greg Young's event sourcing work and CQRS patterns:
- Event Store: Append-only log of domain events; immutable, ordered
- Aggregate Reconstruction: Replay events to reconstruct current state on-demand
- Snapshots: Optimize replay by storing intermediate state; trade storage for speed
- Event Versioning: Events evolve; handle schema changes in replays
- Projections: Materialize different views from event stream (CQRS read models)
Instructions
Identify Core Events: What state changes matter? Order placed, payment received, shipment dispatched. Each event is fact about domain; captured in past tense.
Design Event Schema: Each event contains timestamp, aggregate ID, type, data. Include enough context to understand intent (who, when, why).
Plan Aggregate Boundaries: Group related events into aggregates. Order aggregate: contains all events for single order. Enables consistent snapshots and replay.
Implement Snapshot Strategy: Full replay from beginning gets slow. Snapshot order state every 100 events; replay only from last snapshot. Balance storage and speed.
Create Read Projections: Maintain materialized views (current-state, analytics) from event stream. These are caches; can be rebuilt from events anytime.
Anti-Patterns
- Event Sourcing Everything: Overkill for simple systems. Event store adds complexity. Guard: Use only when auditability or temporal queries justify cost.
- Storing Mutable Events: Treat events as modifiable records. Result: history changes, audit trail meaningless. Guard: Events are immutable facts; never modify.
- No Event Versioning Strategy: Events change, old replays break. Result: can't handle evolution. Guard: Version events; handle multiple versions in replay logic.
- Ignoring Snapshot Consistency: Snapshots diverge from event stream. Result: data inconsistency. Guard: Snapshots are optimization; rebuild from events periodically to verify.
Further Reading
- Event Sourcing by Greg Young — foundational patterns and principles
- Implementing Event Sourcing by Vaughn Vernon — practical patterns for building ES systems
- Event Driven Architecture in Golang by Michael Plöd — implementation patterns