5 ms·

It seems like the post on event driven architecture couldn't handle the click event load from Hacker News and is throwing a "Database Error".

dantodor 7y ago
Yup, the pipelines are down and CQRS is suffering :D
- ralphael 7y ago
  shame as I like the content and this could distract from it
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  Cached db query ? :P Totally fine in Infrastructure
- ak39 7y ago
  That’s a saga for another time.
- erik_seaberg 7y ago
  HN traffic is coming from the wrong side of the RPC/streaming boundary. Everyone could get by with a lot less hardware if HTTP GETs were queued instead of bursts of realtime load.
ralphael 7y ago
shame as I like the content and this could distract from it
Nuzzerino 7y ago
This is tangential but I'm reminded of the ontology people who constantly bash RDF but have trouble providing good arguments or links to documentation as to why it's a bad thing. Ontological tech helps with organization of conceptual data so it would be an easy ask for them. Moral of the story is there's a lot of information being preached by those who either haven't or won't put that knowledge into practice first. It would have been nice to hear about any projects the author could point to and explain how the architecture helped it succeed, but that is absent from this post.
- aledalgrande 7y ago
  Totally agree, a lot of people preaching just after reading books and blog posts and running a minimal hobby project. But I am not surprised. Nothing is inherently bad, unless you use it for the wrong purpose.
- socceroos 7y ago
  The banking system
claytongulick 7y ago
Given what I've seen in practice with companies that try to follow this architecture, I can't say I'm very surprised. This type of architecture is really only suitable for a narrow problem domain, imho. Most people that I've seen attempt it don't understand all of the edge cases that arise from it. For example, not getting immediate success or failure status from an API call, and having to constantly poll to see what the status of a submitted message is.
- nickserv 7y ago
  I think an event based system can apply to a wide variety of domains, but that the consequences need to be understood up front. This means doing things differently than the traditional top down controller approach with synchronous responses. For example, an asynchronous API should have a way of pushing notifications to the caller, and the caller then has a way of processing these returns.
_sbrk 7y ago
Heh heh heh .. yep: "Error establishing a database connection"
nawgszy 7y ago
While I definitely respect seizing the snark opportunity.. I feel like I see loads of websites crash from HN / Reddit hug of death regardless of architecture, so I don't think I would necessarily consider this a failure of the architecture
- tjoff 7y ago
  Maybe says more about current architectures. It is hard to imagine any reason as to why a normal site/blog couldn't cope with this. Now since whatever solution you pick is going to be an overengineered mess it's easy to understand each in isolation, most of us don't have the time/energy to optimize for this. And that is fine! But it is kinda sad that the quick and easy approach is not a statically generated site. There is absolutely no reason why that should be any harder. Yet for some reason we don't value that.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    We don't value it when 99% of blogs never reach a level of traffic, beyond rare spikes, where they need to introduce a cache (like pre-generated files) in front of their dynamically-generated website. The blog operator likely doesn't even notice it, and when they do + are savvy enough, they just install one of the various Wordpress caching/static plugins. And we do value it when downtime loses us business, something that's not likely to apply to our personal blogs. Maybe Wordpress should enable some low-risk caching by default, but maybe it's not worth it since most installs never get traffic and caching is confusing especially to the non-tech-savvy.
    - tjoff 7y ago
      My point is that we probably should value simplicity itself. And as a bonus things like this wouldn't happen.
organsnyder 7y ago
I realize this is mostly snark, but is there any evidence that the website is hosted on a stack that is event-driven? Most likely it's just hosted on WordPress or something.

dantodor 7y ago

Yup, the pipelines are down and CQRS is suffering :D

ralphael 7y ago
shame as I like the content and this could distract from it
NicoJuicy 7y ago
Cached db query ? :P Totally fine in Infrastructure
ak39 7y ago
That’s a saga for another time.
erik_seaberg 7y ago
HN traffic is coming from the wrong side of the RPC/streaming boundary. Everyone could get by with a lot less hardware if HTTP GETs were queued instead of bursts of realtime load.

ralphael 7y ago

shame as I like the content and this could distract from it

Nuzzerino 7y ago

This is tangential but I'm reminded of the ontology people who constantly bash RDF but have trouble providing good arguments or links to documentation as to why it's a bad thing. Ontological tech helps with organization of conceptual data so it would be an easy ask for them. Moral of the story is there's a lot of information being preached by those who either haven't or won't put that knowledge into practice first. It would have been nice to hear about any projects the author could point to and explain how the architecture helped it succeed, but that is absent from this post.

aledalgrande 7y ago
Totally agree, a lot of people preaching just after reading books and blog posts and running a minimal hobby project. But I am not surprised. Nothing is inherently bad, unless you use it for the wrong purpose.
socceroos 7y ago
The banking system

claytongulick 7y ago

Given what I've seen in practice with companies that try to follow this architecture, I can't say I'm very surprised. This type of architecture is really only suitable for a narrow problem domain, imho. Most people that I've seen attempt it don't understand all of the edge cases that arise from it. For example, not getting immediate success or failure status from an API call, and having to constantly poll to see what the status of a submitted message is.

nickserv 7y ago
I think an event based system can apply to a wide variety of domains, but that the consequences need to be understood up front. This means doing things differently than the traditional top down controller approach with synchronous responses. For example, an asynchronous API should have a way of pushing notifications to the caller, and the caller then has a way of processing these returns.

_sbrk 7y ago

Heh heh heh .. yep: "Error establishing a database connection"

nawgszy 7y ago

While I definitely respect seizing the snark opportunity.. I feel like I see loads of websites crash from HN / Reddit hug of death regardless of architecture, so I don't think I would necessarily consider this a failure of the architecture

tjoff 7y ago
Maybe says more about current architectures. It is hard to imagine any reason as to why a normal site/blog couldn't cope with this. Now since whatever solution you pick is going to be an overengineered mess it's easy to understand each in isolation, most of us don't have the time/energy to optimize for this. And that is fine! But it is kinda sad that the quick and easy approach is not a statically generated site. There is absolutely no reason why that should be any harder. Yet for some reason we don't value that.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  We don't value it when 99% of blogs never reach a level of traffic, beyond rare spikes, where they need to introduce a cache (like pre-generated files) in front of their dynamically-generated website. The blog operator likely doesn't even notice it, and when they do + are savvy enough, they just install one of the various Wordpress caching/static plugins. And we do value it when downtime loses us business, something that's not likely to apply to our personal blogs. Maybe Wordpress should enable some low-risk caching by default, but maybe it's not worth it since most installs never get traffic and caching is confusing especially to the non-tech-savvy.
  - tjoff 7y ago
    My point is that we probably should value simplicity itself. And as a bonus things like this wouldn't happen.

organsnyder 7y ago

I realize this is mostly snark, but is there any evidence that the website is hosted on a stack that is event-driven? Most likely it's just hosted on WordPress or something.