Choreography vs Orchestration
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
Choreography: everyone dances independently, reacting to the music (events). Orchestration: a conductor tells each musician when to play. Both work. Choreography is more resilient. Orchestration is easier to debug. Choose based on how complex your dance is.
Real Talk
Two contrasting approaches to service coordination. Choreography uses event-driven communication where services react to events independently (no central coordinator). Orchestration uses a central controller that explicitly directs service interactions. Choreography offers better decoupling; orchestration provides better visibility and control over complex workflows.
When You'll Hear This
"Simple flows use choreography. When we hit 10 steps with conditions and timeouts, we switched to orchestration." / "The choreography vs orchestration debate is one of the biggest architectural decisions in microservices."
Related Terms
Choreography
Choreography is when services coordinate by reacting to each other's events without a central boss.
Event-Driven Architecture
Event-Driven Architecture is like a gossip network. When something happens (order placed!), it broadcasts the news.
Process Manager
A process manager is the project coordinator for long-running workflows.
Saga
A saga is a series of steps where each step has an undo action. If step 3 fails, you run the undo for steps 2 and 1.