Events and Entities, a Dichotomy for the Streaming World

The dichotomy of OLTP versus OLAP is very well known, but perhaps less well known is that the terms were coined circa 1993, i.e. it's only 30 years old. About 15 years ago, NoSQL was all the rage, as the boom of the internet meant that technology companies all started fighting trying to get horizontal scale out of systems built for vertical scale. This has given way to a wide expanse (perhaps it's even fair to call it an overwhelming expanse) of technology choices: Key-Value Stores, Document Stores, Search Engines, Streaming PubSub, Stream Processors, HTAP, Real-time Analytics, Cloud Data Warehouses, etc. etc.

While the number of options available can seem daunting, the overall structure and evolution of these technological systems makes perfect sense when we view them through the lens of the data. Specifically, they are all children of the real dichotomy motivating our streaming data world: Entities versus Events.

This talk explores the dichotomy of Entities versus Events, providing an overarching context to make sense of system architecture choices in the streaming world. Through understanding the difference between an Entity and an Event, attendees will become better equipped to navigate the technological choices presented by the Streaming ecosystem.