Event Store Design
Comprehensive guide to designing event stores for event-sourced applications.
Do not use this skill when
- The task is unrelated to event store design
- You need a different domain or tool outside this scope
Instructions
- Clarify goals, constraints, and required inputs.
- Apply relevant best practices and validate outcomes.
- Provide actionable steps and verification.
- If detailed examples are required, open
resources/implementation-playbook.md.
Use this skill when
- 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
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)
);
CREATE INDEX idx_events_stream_id ON events(stream_id, version);
CREATE INDEX idx_events_global_position ON events(global_position);
CREATE INDEX idx_events_event_type ON events(event_type);
CREATE INDEX idx_events_created_at ON events(created_at);
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()
);
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():
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}"
)
start_version = await conn.fetchval(
"SELECT COALESCE(MAX(version), 0) + 1 FROM events WHERE stream_id = $1",
stream_id
)
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']
