AWS Integration Patterns

Event-Driven Patterns

Event-driven integration on AWS leverages services like Amazon EventBridge, SNS, and SQS to decouple producers from consumers. EventBridge serves as the central event bus, enabling content-based routing where events are automatically directed to the appropriate targets based on their payload structure and metadata. This pattern eliminates the tight coupling that plagues traditional request-reply integrations.

For high-throughput scenarios, Amazon Kinesis Data Streams provides ordered, durable event streaming with configurable retention periods. Pair Kinesis with Lambda consumers for serverless processing, or use Kinesis Data Firehose for automatic delivery to S3, Redshift, or OpenSearch. The choice between EventBridge and Kinesis depends on your throughput requirements and whether event ordering is critical.

Implement dead-letter queues on every event consumer to capture failed processing attempts. Use SQS dead-letter queues with CloudWatch alarms to ensure no events are silently dropped. Build replay capabilities using EventBridge Archive and Replay to recover from processing failures without data loss.

API-Led Patterns

API-led integration on AWS centers around Amazon API Gateway as the front door for all synchronous integrations. Design your APIs in three layers: system APIs that wrap individual backend services, process APIs that orchestrate business workflows, and experience APIs that serve specific consumer needs. This layered approach promotes reusability and reduces the blast radius of backend changes.

Use API Gateway with AWS Lambda for lightweight transformations and orchestration, or connect directly to AWS Step Functions for complex multi-step workflows. Step Functions provides built-in error handling, retry logic, and visual workflow monitoring that simplifies troubleshooting. For latency-sensitive APIs, consider API Gateway with direct service integrations to skip the Lambda cold start overhead.

Hybrid Approaches

Most enterprise environments require a hybrid approach that combines event-driven and API-led patterns. Use synchronous APIs for operations that require immediate responses, such as data lookups and validation checks, while routing state-changing operations through event-driven pipelines for resilience and scalability.

The CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) pattern maps naturally to this hybrid model on AWS. Commands flow through EventBridge and are processed asynchronously, while queries hit read-optimized views through API Gateway. This separation allows each path to scale independently and use the most appropriate data store for its access pattern.

When connecting to on-premises systems, use AWS PrivateLink and Transit Gateway to establish secure, low-latency connectivity. Deploy integration adapters on Amazon ECS that bridge between cloud-native event patterns and legacy protocols like SOAP, FTP, or proprietary messaging systems. This approach modernizes your integration layer without requiring changes to existing on-premises applications.