Orchestration vs. Choreography: The good, the bad, and the trade-offs
summary
Compares a command‑driven state machine orchestrator with event‑driven choreography using a message broker, showing orchestration centralizes workflow state and visibility while choreography removes temporal coupling but increases bidirectional and emergent coupling. Uses a loan‑broker → credit‑score → quoting → ranking example, models synchronous and asynchronous variants, and enumerates failure modes (compensations, versioning, observability) and scalability tradeoffs. Delivers a five‑question decision framework to pick where to orchestrate versus choreograph and recommends splitting large workflows before choosing.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00House and mortgage metaphor
- 6:32Orchestration vs choreography
- 9:00Orchestration synchronous
- 12:56Choreography event-driven
- 19:36Misconceptions sync async
- 21:21Async orchestration benefits
- 28:31Choreography drawbacks
- 35:35Publisher intent clarity
- 39:08Complex workflow changes
- 43:45Versioning challenges
- 45:13Lack observability
- 48:07Wrong question
- 48:48Coordination decisions
- 53:25Workflow size limits
- 55:57Service boundaries
- 57:20Conclusion
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