Event-Driven Architecture

Why Trust Techopedia

What Does Event-Driven Architecture Mean?

Event-driven architecture (EDA) is a software architecture pattern that promotes the production, detection and consumption of, and reaction to, significant changes in a system’s state (known as events). This is applied through the design and implementation of applications and systems that transmit events among loosely coupled software components and services.

Techopedia Explains Event-Driven Architecture

Event-driven architecture compliments service-oriented architecture because these services can be activated by triggers fired on incoming events. Event-driven systems include event emitters and event consumers. Event consumers apply reactions as soon as events are presented. The initial category of event consumers is based on traditional components such as message-oriented middleware, while the second category requires an appropriate transactional executive framework.

Events have two parts:

  1. Header: Includes information such as event name, event time stamp and event type
  2. Body: Describes what actually happened

Event-triggered architecture is built on four logical layers:

  • Event generator
  • Event channel
  • Event processing engine
  • Downstream event-driven activity

The three styles of event processing are:

  • Simple event processing
  • Event stream processing
  • Complex event processing

Related Terms

Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.