Event Store Design Comprehensive guide to designing event stores for event-sourced applications. When to Use This Skill Designing event sourcing infrastructure Choosing between event store technologies Implementing custom event stores Optimizing event storage and retrieval Setting up event store schemas Planning for event store scaling Core Concepts 1. Event Store Architecture ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Event Store │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ ┌─────────────┐ ┌─────────────┐ ┌─────────────┐ │ │ │ Stream 1 │ │ Stream 2 │ │ Stream 3 │ │ │ │ (Aggregate) │ │ (Aggregate) │ │ (Aggregate) │ │ │ ├─────────────┤ ├─────────────┤ ├─────────────┤ │ │ │ Event 1 │ │ Event 1 │ │ Event 1 │ │ │ │ Event 2 │ │ Event 2 │ │ Event 2 │ │ │ │ Event 3 │ │ ... │ │ Event 3 │ │ │ │ ... │ │ │ │ Event 4 │ │ │ └─────────────┘ └─────────────┘ └─────────────┘ │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ Global Position: 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → 5 → 6 → ... │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ 2. Event Store Requirements Requirement Description Append-only Events are immutable, only appends Ordered Per-stream and global ordering Versioned Optimistic concurrency control Subscriptions Real-time event notifications Idempotent Handle duplicate writes safely Technology Comparison Technology Best For Limitations EventStoreDB Pure event sourcing Single-purpose PostgreSQL Existing Postgres stack Manual implementation Kafka High-throughput streaming Not ideal for per-stream queries DynamoDB Serverless, AWS-native Query limitations Marten .NET ecosystems .NET specific Templates Template 1: PostgreSQL Event Store Schema -- Events table CREATE TABLE events ( id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid ( ) , stream_id VARCHAR ( 255 ) NOT NULL , stream_type VARCHAR ( 255 ) NOT NULL , event_type VARCHAR ( 255 ) NOT NULL , event_data JSONB NOT NULL , metadata JSONB DEFAULT '{}' , version BIGINT NOT NULL , global_position BIGSERIAL , created_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT NOW ( ) , CONSTRAINT unique_stream_version UNIQUE ( stream_id , version ) ) ; -- Index for stream queries CREATE INDEX idx_events_stream_id ON events ( stream_id , version ) ; -- Index for global subscription CREATE INDEX idx_events_global_position ON events ( global_position ) ; -- Index for event type queries CREATE INDEX idx_events_event_type ON events ( event_type ) ; -- Index for time-based queries CREATE INDEX idx_events_created_at ON events ( created_at ) ; -- Snapshots table CREATE TABLE snapshots ( stream_id VARCHAR ( 255 ) PRIMARY KEY , stream_type VARCHAR ( 255 ) NOT NULL , snapshot_data JSONB NOT NULL , version BIGINT NOT NULL , created_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT NOW ( ) ) ; -- Subscriptions checkpoint table CREATE TABLE subscription_checkpoints ( subscription_id VARCHAR ( 255 ) PRIMARY KEY , last_position BIGINT NOT NULL DEFAULT 0 , updated_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT NOW ( ) ) ; Template 2: Python Event Store Implementation from dataclasses import dataclass , field from datetime import datetime from typing import Any , Optional , List from uuid import UUID , uuid4 import json import asyncpg @dataclass class Event : stream_id : str event_type : str data : dict metadata : dict = field ( default_factory = dict ) event_id : UUID = field ( default_factory = uuid4 ) version : Optional [ int ] = None global_position : Optional [ int ] = None created_at : datetime = field ( default_factory = datetime . utcnow ) class EventStore : def init ( self , pool : asyncpg . Pool ) : self . pool = pool async def append_events ( self , stream_id : str , stream_type : str , events : List [ Event ] , expected_version : Optional [ int ] = None ) -
List [ Event ] : """Append events to a stream with optimistic concurrency.""" async with self . pool . acquire ( ) as conn : async with conn . transaction ( ) :
Check expected version
if expected_version is not None : current = await conn . fetchval ( "SELECT MAX(version) FROM events WHERE stream_id = $1" , stream_id ) current = current or 0 if current != expected_version : raise ConcurrencyError ( f"Expected version { expected_version } , got { current } " )
Get starting version
start_version
await conn . fetchval ( "SELECT COALESCE(MAX(version), 0) + 1 FROM events WHERE stream_id = $1" , stream_id )
Insert events
saved_events
[ ] for i , event in enumerate ( events ) : event . version = start_version + i row = await conn . fetchrow ( """ INSERT INTO events (id, stream_id, stream_type, event_type, event_data, metadata, version, created_at) VALUES ($1, $2, $3, $4, $5, $6, $7, $8) RETURNING global_position """ , event . event_id , stream_id , stream_type , event . event_type , json . dumps ( event . data ) , json . dumps ( event . metadata ) , event . version , event . created_at ) event . global_position = row [ 'global_position' ] saved_events . append ( event ) return saved_events async def read_stream ( self , stream_id : str , from_version : int = 0 , limit : int = 1000 ) -
List [ Event ] : """Read events from a stream.""" async with self . pool . acquire ( ) as conn : rows = await conn . fetch ( """ SELECT id, stream_id, event_type, event_data, metadata, version, global_position, created_at FROM events WHERE stream_id = $1 AND version >= $2 ORDER BY version LIMIT $3 """ , stream_id , from_version , limit ) return [ self . _row_to_event ( row ) for row in rows ] async def read_all ( self , from_position : int = 0 , limit : int = 1000 ) -
List [ Event ] : """Read all events globally.""" async with self . pool . acquire ( ) as conn : rows = await conn . fetch ( """ SELECT id, stream_id, event_type, event_data, metadata, version, global_position, created_at FROM events WHERE global_position > $1 ORDER BY global_position LIMIT $2 """ , from_position , limit ) return [ self . _row_to_event ( row ) for row in rows ] async def subscribe ( self , subscription_id : str , handler , from_position : int = 0 , batch_size : int = 100 ) : """Subscribe to all events from a position."""
Get checkpoint
async with self . pool . acquire ( ) as conn : checkpoint = await conn . fetchval ( """ SELECT last_position FROM subscription_checkpoints WHERE subscription_id = $1 """ , subscription_id ) position = checkpoint or from_position while True : events = await self . read_all ( position , batch_size ) if not events : await asyncio . sleep ( 1 )
Poll interval
continue for event in events : await handler ( event ) position = event . global_position
Save checkpoint
async with self . pool . acquire ( ) as conn : await conn . execute ( """ INSERT INTO subscription_checkpoints (subscription_id, last_position) VALUES ($1, $2) ON CONFLICT (subscription_id) DO UPDATE SET last_position = $2, updated_at = NOW() """ , subscription_id , position ) def _row_to_event ( self , row ) -
Event : return Event ( event_id = row [ 'id' ] , stream_id = row [ 'stream_id' ] , event_type = row [ 'event_type' ] , data = json . loads ( row [ 'event_data' ] ) , metadata = json . loads ( row [ 'metadata' ] ) , version = row [ 'version' ] , global_position = row [ 'global_position' ] , created_at = row [ 'created_at' ] ) class ConcurrencyError ( Exception ) : """Raised when optimistic concurrency check fails.""" pass Template 3: EventStoreDB Usage from esdbclient import EventStoreDBClient , NewEvent , StreamState import json
Connect
client
EventStoreDBClient ( uri = "esdb://localhost:2113?tls=false" )
Append events
def append_events ( stream_name : str , events : list , expected_revision = None ) : new_events = [ NewEvent ( type = event [ 'type' ] , data = json . dumps ( event [ 'data' ] ) . encode ( ) , metadata = json . dumps ( event . get ( 'metadata' , { } ) ) . encode ( ) ) for event in events ] if expected_revision is None : state = StreamState . ANY elif expected_revision == - 1 : state = StreamState . NO_STREAM else : state = expected_revision return client . append_to_stream ( stream_name = stream_name , events = new_events , current_version = state )
Read stream
def read_stream ( stream_name : str , from_revision : int = 0 ) : events = client . get_stream ( stream_name = stream_name , stream_position = from_revision ) return [ { 'type' : event . type , 'data' : json . loads ( event . data ) , 'metadata' : json . loads ( event . metadata ) if event . metadata else { } , 'stream_position' : event . stream_position , 'commit_position' : event . commit_position } for event in events ]
Subscribe to all
async def subscribe_to_all ( handler , from_position : int = 0 ) : subscription = client . subscribe_to_all ( commit_position = from_position ) async for event in subscription : await handler ( { 'type' : event . type , 'data' : json . loads ( event . data ) , 'stream_id' : event . stream_name , 'position' : event . commit_position } )
Category projection ($ce-Category)
def read_category ( category : str ) : """Read all events for a category using system projection.""" return read_stream ( f"$ce- { category } " ) Template 4: DynamoDB Event Store import boto3 from boto3 . dynamodb . conditions import Key from datetime import datetime import json import uuid class DynamoEventStore : def init ( self , table_name : str ) : self . dynamodb = boto3 . resource ( 'dynamodb' ) self . table = self . dynamodb . Table ( table_name ) def append_events ( self , stream_id : str , events : list , expected_version : int = None ) : """Append events with conditional write for concurrency.""" with self . table . batch_writer ( ) as batch : for i , event in enumerate ( events ) : version = ( expected_version or 0 ) + i + 1 item = { 'PK' : f"STREAM# { stream_id } " , 'SK' : f"VERSION# { version : 020d } " , 'GSI1PK' : 'EVENTS' , 'GSI1SK' : datetime . utcnow ( ) . isoformat ( ) , 'event_id' : str ( uuid . uuid4 ( ) ) , 'stream_id' : stream_id , 'event_type' : event [ 'type' ] , 'event_data' : json . dumps ( event [ 'data' ] ) , 'version' : version , 'created_at' : datetime . utcnow ( ) . isoformat ( ) } batch . put_item ( Item = item ) return events def read_stream ( self , stream_id : str , from_version : int = 0 ) : """Read events from a stream.""" response = self . table . query ( KeyConditionExpression = Key ( 'PK' ) . eq ( f"STREAM# { stream_id } " ) & Key ( 'SK' ) . gte ( f"VERSION# { from_version : 020d } " ) ) return [ { 'event_type' : item [ 'event_type' ] , 'data' : json . loads ( item [ 'event_data' ] ) , 'version' : item [ 'version' ] } for item in response [ 'Items' ] ]
Table definition (CloudFormation/Terraform)
""" DynamoDB Table: - PK (Partition Key): String - SK (Sort Key): String - GSI1PK, GSI1SK for global ordering Capacity: On-demand or provisioned based on throughput needs """ Best Practices Do's Use stream IDs that include aggregate type - Order-{uuid} Include correlation/causation IDs - For tracing Version events from day one - Plan for schema evolution Implement idempotency - Use event IDs for deduplication Index appropriately - For your query patterns Don'ts Don't update or delete events - They're immutable facts Don't store large payloads - Keep events small Don't skip optimistic concurrency - Prevents data corruption Don't ignore backpressure - Handle slow consumers