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by echelon 1330 days ago
Thin event (1): person object XYZ changed.

Thin event (2): address object ABC changed.

Delta event (1): person object XYZ's name changed to "Bob"

Delta event (2): address object ABC's address line 2 was deleted and zip code was changed to "12345"

Fat event (1): person object XYZ changed, and here's everything we think person-consuming systems will care about

Fat event (2): address object ABC changed, and here's everything we think address-consuming systems will need

Entire object (1): { person: { token: "XYZ", name: "Bob", email: "bob@bob.com" age: 42, likes: ["ice cream", ...], ... }, updated_at: T, updated_by: U, version: 3, ... }

Entire object (2): { address: { token: "ABC", line_1: "1234 Some Place Rd.", line_2: null, city: "Everywhere", state: "NA", zip: "12345", ... }, updated_at: T, updated_by: U, version: 5, ... }

1 comments

since the "fat event" ones are vaguely defined here, they could be arbitrarily close to or far from the "Entire object" cases. How does it differ? Maybe it does not.
Your team decides what parts of the model to expose in its events and it becomes an API in its own right.

You might change the names of fields, move them to places that don't reflect where they live on a nested model, etc. It requires a lot more thought and maintenance.

That isn't to say the choice can't be correct. All of these approaches have pros and cons.