Having a grasp of common architectural patterns is essential to designing software architecture at scale. Using them saves not only time but also ensures a reliable implementation of your design. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when there’s an architectural pattern available that applies to an architecture you’re developing.
The following is a brief overview of the Pub-Sub architectural pattern.
Understanding the Pub-Sub pattern
The Pub-Sub pattern is one in which a process sends a message into a message broker. Then, the message is forwarded to one or more parties listening for incoming messages according to a given topic. You can think of a topic as an “inbox.”
Sending a message to the broker is called publishing. Binding to a particular topic and then listening for incoming messages at the inbox is called subscribing. Hence, the term Pub-Sub.

Pros
- Pub-Sub activity is asynchronous (a.k.a, “fire and forget”). Hence, there is little risk of performance degradation due to a process getting caught in a long-running data exchange interaction.
- Adding or removing subscribers to a topic is a matter of configuration. No complex programming is required. Thus, Pub-Sub systems provide a great deal of scalability and flexibility.
Cons
- Testing can be a challenge. Because interactions are asynchronous, testing is not a matter of making a request and then analyzing the result. Rather a message must be sent into the system, and then the test needs to observe the behavior of the process(s) under test to see when and how it handles the message. And, if the process under test requires consuming many messages from a topic over time, the testing regimens can become more difficult to manage.
- An unexpected surge in message emission can cause bottlenecks in the network and have unexpected results for the consuming message broker.
- Requires a well-defined policy for message formatting and message exchange; otherwise, message consumption can become mangled and error-prone.
Putting it all together
The Pub-Sub pattern is the bedrock of asynchronous architectural design. There are a large number of messaging applications and cloud services dedicated to the Pub-Sub pattern. Using Pub-Sub can be tricky, particularly when there are many topics in play. Learning the basic concepts is straightforward, but implementations can be challenging depending on the messaging technology used and the scope of asynchronous activity that needs to be supported. Still, when it comes to implementing asynchronous communication among services and components in a large distributed application, the Pub-Sub pattern is quite popular.
저자 소개
Bob Reselman is a nationally known software developer, system architect, industry analyst, and technical writer/journalist. Over a career that spans 30 years, Bob has worked for companies such as Gateway, Cap Gemini, The Los Angeles Weekly, Edmunds.com and the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, to name a few. He has held roles with significant responsibility, including but not limited to, Platform Architect (Consumer) at Gateway, Principal Consultant with Cap Gemini and CTO at the international trade finance company, ItFex.
채널별 검색
오토메이션
기술, 팀, 인프라를 위한 IT 자동화 최신 동향
인공지능
고객이 어디서나 AI 워크로드를 실행할 수 있도록 지원하는 플랫폼 업데이트
오픈 하이브리드 클라우드
하이브리드 클라우드로 더욱 유연한 미래를 구축하는 방법을 알아보세요
보안
환경과 기술 전반에 걸쳐 리스크를 감소하는 방법에 대한 최신 정보
엣지 컴퓨팅
엣지에서의 운영을 단순화하는 플랫폼 업데이트
인프라
세계적으로 인정받은 기업용 Linux 플랫폼에 대한 최신 정보
애플리케이션
복잡한 애플리케이션에 대한 솔루션 더 보기
오리지널 쇼
엔터프라이즈 기술 분야의 제작자와 리더가 전하는 흥미로운 스토리
제품
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise
- Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
- 클라우드 서비스
- 모든 제품 보기
툴
체험, 구매 & 영업
커뮤니케이션
Red Hat 소개
Red Hat은 Linux, 클라우드, 컨테이너, 쿠버네티스 등을 포함한 글로벌 엔터프라이즈 오픈소스 솔루션 공급업체입니다. Red Hat은 코어 데이터센터에서 네트워크 엣지에 이르기까지 다양한 플랫폼과 환경에서 기업의 업무 편의성을 높여 주는 강화된 기능의 솔루션을 제공합니다.