Pub/Sub

Pub/Sub is a shorthand for publish/subscribe, the communication model where applications exchange messages asynchronously. It decouples between the applications that send the messages (called publishers or producers) and those that receive them (called subscribers or consumers).

This type of communication is commonly found in modern applications, in oppose to the more traditional ones, like the remote procedural calls (RPC) or the direct API calls, because it provides better scalability and stability.

book Queue vs. Topic

There are two models of how a message broker collects and delivers the messages: queue and topic.

Queue offers a First In First Out (FIFO) message delivery model. In this model, the order of the messages matter. A message is usually processed once by a consumer to maintain its integrity. While the producers are generally independent of the consumers, they usually expect that the messages will be processed at some point.

In contrast, a Topic is usually delivered immediately to the subscribers without really considering the order of the incoming messages. The publishers usually don’t care who will process the message or if the message will not be processed at all. It is mainly in the interest of the consumer to subscribe to a topic.

book Service to Client

When talking about the Pub/Sub system, we usually think it is a “service to service” communication. It happens behind the curtain without us, as the end-users know the message flows.

However, don’t forget that Pub/Sub mechanism can also happen to the “service to client” communication in the modern application, especially with the rise of web socket. It is possible now for a client (usually an opened web browser) to subscribe for events that happened on the server.

For example, in the e-commerce application, instead of blocking the users from doing the other activities while waiting for their order to be processed, the application can just subscribe to be notified when the process is complete.

The tools like SignalR and Azure Web PubSub service were created for this purpose.

book Azure Event Hub vs. Azure Service Bus

It’s also a topic that always comes up when designing event-based architecture, which one to choose: the Azure Event Hub or Service Bus. They’re both excellent Azure services that serve a similar purpose when seen from the surface.

The dev team needs to learn about the exact requirements of the applications (check the docs). But, the following points should be a good start to help to decide which service is best for them:

  • use Azure Event Hub if you need to stream the application events for analytical or audit purposes in the future. Other services can subscribe to the broadcasted events and do specific actions, but it shouldn’t be a problem if no one processes them anyway.
  • use Azure Service Bus if the published messages need to be processed at least once. The consumer needs to report back if the messages have been successfully processed or failed to maintain the integrity of the data flows.

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