Say Goodbye to Direct Communication! Event-Driven Pub/Sub With NATS

This podcast explains the concept of event-driven architecture and how it can be implemented using NATS, a message broker. It emphasizes decoupling applications by utilizing publish/subscribe messaging, where applications publish events and subscribe to channels to react to events, achieving a separation of concerns. This approach allows for flexibility and scalability in application design, enabling independent processes that are oblivious to each other.

Decoupled Applications

• 00:00:09 The core concept is to create a system where applications are decoupled and independent of each other. Instead of direct communication, applications publish events (messages) to channels and subscribe to channels for specific events. This approach avoids direct dependencies between applications.

Pub/Sub Messaging

• 00:01:52 The podcast focuses on pub/sub messaging using NATS, a message broker, to implement event-driven architecture. NATS is described as fast and simple, and the podcast emphasizes that other similar tools could be used. The speaker uses NATS for demonstration purposes.

Channels and Messages

• 00:04:23 The podcast introduces the concept of channels, analogous to Reddit feeds or Slack channels, within NATS. Applications can publish messages to channels and subscribe to channels to receive messages. The speaker illustrates this with examples of publishing and subscribing to channels and highlights the 'fire and forget' nature of the approach.

Requests and Responses

• 00:07:28 Beyond 'fire and forget' messaging, the podcast demonstrates how NATS can handle requests and responses. Applications can send requests to specific channels, and other applications subscribed to those channels can respond. This behavior is analogous to traditional HTTP requests, but the communication is facilitated by NATS.

CI/CD Example

• 00:09:15 The podcast uses a CI/CD workflow as an example to illustrate event-driven architecture in a real-world scenario. The workflow publishes events when it completes its tasks, and other applications can subscribe to those events to trigger further actions. This showcases how independent processes can interact through events.