Feature Toggle Event Sourcing for Point-in-Time Restoration
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Solution Overview
Problem
In software applications with feature toggles and continuous deployment, it is challenging to understand the application's behavior at a specific point-in-time due to complexity and difficulty in performing targeted historical regression.
Innovation Solution
The method involves maintaining feature toggle events with event sourcing techniques, storing them in a repository, and consuming these events up to a specified point-in-time to restore the application's feature toggle settings, allowing for the recreation of the application's behavior at that time.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If feature toggles are combined with continuous deployment practices, then the application can be deployed frequently with new code, but it becomes difficult to understand how the application was behaving at a specific point-in-time
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by capturing and storing feature toggle state changes as events in an event stream before they are lost. Each feature toggle change is recorded with a timestamp and stored in an event-sourced repository, preserving the historical state of the application configuration for later retrieval and analysis.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a copy of the feature toggle state history by maintaining an event stream that replicates all state changes. This copy allows reconstruction of the application's feature toggle configuration at any point-in-time without affecting the live system, enabling historical behavior analysis.
2Measurement precision
If feature toggle events are stored and processed to restore application behavior, then point-in-time restoration is achieved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces an intermediary event stream and event sourcing infrastructure between the feature toggle management system and the application. This intermediary layer captures state changes, stores them in a standardized format with timestamps, and provides query capabilities for point-in-time restoration, isolating the complexity from the core application logic.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are provided for feature toggle management with application behavior point-in-time restoration using event sourcing. One method comprises maintaining feature toggle events for features of an application, wherein each feature toggle event comprises an indication of an event time of the respective feature toggle event for a given feature; receiving a request to execute the application with feature toggle settings associated with an indicated point-in-time; and initiating an execution of the application with the feature toggle settings associated with the indicated point-in-time by processing the feature toggle events having an event time up to the indicated point-in-time. Event sourcing techniques may be employed to store the plurality of feature toggle events for the plurality of features in an event repository. The application may consume the feature toggle events having an event time up to the indicated point-in-time and may ignore the feature toggle events having an event time after the indicated point-in-time.