https://www.ashrafmageed.com/Software Architecture, EDA, DDD, Microserviceshttps://www.ashrafmageed.com/seeing-beyond-the-boxes-and-arrows/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/seeing-beyond-the-boxes-and-arrows/Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTTwo recent design discussions at work left me reflecting on a handful of recurring patterns that can prevent architecture conversations from moving forward. In…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/architecting-for-change-part-v-why-architecture-review-boards-make-complexity-worse/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/architecting-for-change-part-v-why-architecture-review-boards-make-complexity-worse/Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTIn the previous post in this series, I looked at accidental complexity and how it enters a system. When organisations begin to feel the effects of accidental…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/microservices-did-not-fail-the-boundaries-did/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/microservices-did-not-fail-the-boundaries-did/Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTThis post comes off the back of a week of seeing the same old “microservices are bad, monoliths are good” arguments. In some contexts, that reaction is…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/architecting-for-change-part-iv-how-accidental-complexity-gets-into-a-system/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/architecting-for-change-part-iv-how-accidental-complexity-gets-into-a-system/Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTAccidental complexity rarely announces itself. It usually arrives as drag. Changes that should be straightforward take longer than expected. Teams need more…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/cqrs-eventsourcing-and-the-cost-of-tooling-constraints/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/cqrs-eventsourcing-and-the-cost-of-tooling-constraints/Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMTSeveral years ago, I led the implementation of a set of CQRS-based, event-sourced microservices built using Domain-Driven Design (DDD) for a bank. From the…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/architecting-for-change-part-iii-sources-of-complexity-2/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/architecting-for-change-part-iii-sources-of-complexity-2/Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMTIn my previous post, I examined how complexity and cognitive load can hinder delivery, compromise security, and make systems more difficult to evolve and…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/architecting-for-change-part-ii-complexity-cognitive-loads-impact/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/architecting-for-change-part-ii-complexity-cognitive-loads-impact/Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMTThe last post in this series discussed the implications of not architecting for change. I highlighted several issues that ultimately increase the cost of…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/ddd-misconceptions/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/ddd-misconceptions/Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTI have seen numerous implementations of DDD over the years, and during that time, I have noticed a few recurring misconceptions. Addressing these misconceptions…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/understanding-the-true-causes-of-high-logging-costs/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/understanding-the-true-causes-of-high-logging-costs/Wed, 14 May 2025 00:00:00 GMTIn my previous blog post, I spoke about the evolution of observability, exploring its history and the rise of OpenTelemetry as a powerful tool to tackle modern…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/architecting-for-change-part-i-why-does-it-matter/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/architecting-for-change-part-i-why-does-it-matter/Sun, 11 May 2025 00:00:00 GMTThere are myriad reasons for change. Competition, evolving user expectations, technological advancements, regulations, bugs, security fixes, performance…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/the-hidden-complexity-of-crud/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/the-hidden-complexity-of-crud/Sun, 05 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMTIn an age where microservices have become the architectural norm, it’s common to see service interfaces defined as simple CRUD endpoints. At first glance, this…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/observability-2/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/observability-2/Sun, 17 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMTObservability's origin story starts in control theory. Control theory is a field of engineering and mathematics that deals with understanding and influencing…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/evaluating-async-process-design/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/evaluating-async-process-design/Sat, 14 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMTI was recently asked to provide feedback on an implementation designed to decouple accepting requests in a service from processing them. Initially, I intended…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/targeted-event-carried-state-transfer/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/targeted-event-carried-state-transfer/Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTAnother flavour of microservices’ integrationhttps://www.ashrafmageed.com/event-carried-state-transfer-integration-in-microservices/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/event-carried-state-transfer-integration-in-microservices/Tue, 03 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTGood or Bad?https://www.ashrafmageed.com/reimplementingleakyintegration/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/reimplementingleakyintegration/Thu, 29 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMTEmbracing Behavioural Couplinghttps://www.ashrafmageed.com/read-models-spanning-microservices-boundaries/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/read-models-spanning-microservices-boundaries/Mon, 26 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMTOr glorified data cacheshttps://www.ashrafmageed.com/event-sourcing-oops-wrong-aggregate-boundary/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/event-sourcing-oops-wrong-aggregate-boundary/Thu, 24 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMTHow I shared streams to split an aggregate and why.https://www.ashrafmageed.com/sagas-part-4-design-considerations-continued/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/sagas-part-4-design-considerations-continued/Wed, 09 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMTExceptions, Cancellation, Idempotency and Isolationhttps://www.ashrafmageed.com/leaky-event-based-microservices-integration/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/leaky-event-based-microservices-integration/Mon, 31 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTWhen Events are Passive-Aggressive Commandshttps://www.ashrafmageed.com/sagas-part-4-design-considerations/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/sagas-part-4-design-considerations/Mon, 24 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTSagas — Part 1: An Introduction Sagas — Part 2: Sagas in Distributed System Sagas — Part 2b: Sagas in Distributed Systems Continued Sagas…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/sagas-part-3-choreography-instead/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/sagas-part-3-choreography-instead/Mon, 10 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTWhen to Choose Choreographyhttps://www.ashrafmageed.com/sagas-part-2b-sagas-in-distributed-systems-continued/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/sagas-part-2b-sagas-in-distributed-systems-continued/Fri, 07 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMTPragmatism and Boundarieshttps://www.ashrafmageed.com/sagas-part-2-sagas-in-distributed-systems/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/sagas-part-2-sagas-in-distributed-systems/Wed, 28 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMTIn the previous post in this series, I briefly touched on why distributed transactions are not suitable in distributed systems:https://www.ashrafmageed.com/sagas-part-1-an-introduction/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/sagas-part-1-an-introduction/Tue, 20 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMTOrchestration and Sagashttps://www.ashrafmageed.com/re-designing-an-aggregation-microservice-part-3/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/re-designing-an-aggregation-microservice-part-3/Sun, 11 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMTRe-designing an Aggregation Microservice — Part 1https://www.ashrafmageed.com/re-designing-an-aggregation-microservice-part-2/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/re-designing-an-aggregation-microservice-part-2/Thu, 14 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMTIn the first post in this series, I introduced the current design of the reporting service. And discussed some of the issues with that…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/re-designing-an-aggregation-microservice-part-1/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/re-designing-an-aggregation-microservice-part-1/Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMTI was involved in a recent discussion regarding how to improve a reporting microservice that aggregates data from numerous services. There…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/outboxmongo/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/outboxmongo/Mon, 13 May 2019 00:00:00 GMTI have blogged previously about how we implemented the Outbox pattern on top of SQL Server and Websphere MQ to avoid distributed…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/dtcenforcedconstraints/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/dtcenforcedconstraints/Mon, 31 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMTThere are numerous blogs and talks out there about why you should or should not use distributed transaction coordinators (DTC) and they…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/outboxpattern/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/outboxpattern/Mon, 21 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMTI’m currently architecting a payment system for domestic payments for a UK bank. This is a greenfield system that is going to consist of a…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/scalability3/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/scalability3/Sat, 07 Feb 2015 00:00:00 GMTIn part 2, I briefly covered Event-Driven SOA and why event messages are preferred for communication between services. I also stated that…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/scalability2/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/scalability2/Sat, 24 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMTIn the previous post in this series, I wrote about scaling up vs out, why we chose scaling-out and why layered service models are not the answer. In this post,…https://www.ashrafmageed.com/scalability/https://www.ashrafmageed.com/scalability/Mon, 22 Dec 2014 00:00:00 GMTIn this series of posts, I will discuss the challenges I faced developing a highly scalable and highly available SaaS product using a Service-Oriented…