Axon Framework

Axon Framework helps build scalable, extensible and maintainable applications by supporting developers in the application of the Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS) architectural pattern. It does so by providing implementations, sometimes complete, sometimes abstract, of the most important building blocks, such as aggregates, repositories and event busses (the dispatching mechanism for events). Furthermore, Axon provides annotation support, which allows you to build aggregates and event listeners without tying your code to Axon specific logic. This allows you to focus on your business logic, instead of the plumbing, and helps you makes your code easier to test in isolation.

 

Axon does not, in any way, try to hide the CQRS architecture or any of its components from developers. Therefore, depending on team size, it is still advisable to have one or more developers with a thorough understanding of CQRS on each team. However, Axon does help when it comes to guaranteeing delivering events to the right event listeners and processing them concurrently and in the correct order. These multi-threading concerns are typically hard to deal with, leading to hard-to-trace bugs and sometimes complete application failure. When you have a tight deadline, you probably don't even want to care about these concerns. Axon's code is thoroughly tested to prevent these types of bugs.

 

Most of the concerns Axon addresses are located inside the JVM. However, for an application to be scalable, a single JVM is not enough. Therefore, Axon provides the axon-integration module, which allows events to be sent to a Spring Integration channel. From there, you can use Spring Integration to dispatch events to application components on different machines. In the near future, Axon will provide more ways to dispatch events between JVM's and physical machines.

 

 

In case you want to stay informed about the Axon Framework or need help, please contact us.