What is a message bus?
The term message bus originates from enterprise architecture patterns. The pattern aims to:
- Create a common data model and command set shared through a set of shared interfaces
- Allow decoupling of applications so that old ones could be taken away and new ones added with minimal disruption
A shared file could technically satisfy the definition of a message bus (and that is kind of what Kafka is).
In modern software development, we have many different flavors of message buses at our disposal. Purists may argue that some of the tools suggested here aren’t technically message buses—they are message queues. The distinction is that the definition of message bus does not say anything about guaranteed ordering or other queue-like semantics. Truthfully, I think it’s unimportant, and it’s more important to ensure you pick the correct tool for what you are trying to achieve. Next, I have included a few popular message bus...
