Summary

You have reached the end of this chapter, where we explored the most important messaging and integration patterns and their role in designing distributed systems. You should now be confident with the three key message exchange patterns—Publish/Subscribe, Task Distribution, and Request/Reply, and know how to implement them using either a peer-to-peer architecture or a broker. We compared the pros and cons of each approach and saw how brokers, whether based on message queues or data streams, can deliver reliable, scalable applications with minimal effort, at the cost of one more system to maintain.

You also learned how ZeroMQ lets you build distributed systems with complete control, fine-tuning the architecture to your exact needs. Both broker-based and peer-to-peer approaches give you the tools to create anything from simple chat apps to large-scale platforms serving millions.

This chapter also marks the end of the book. By now, you should have a full toolbelt...