10. Performance Tuning

If you have generated the tables automatically using your JPA implementation (e.g. Hibernate), you probably do not have all the right indexes set on your tables. Different usages of the Event Store require different indexes to be set for optimal performance. This list suggests the indexes that should be added for the different types of queries used by the default EventEntryStore implementation:

The default column lengths generated by e.g. Hibernate may work, but won't be optimal. A UUID, for example, will always have the same length. Instead of a variable length column of 255 characters, you could use a fixed length column of 36 characters for the aggregate identifier.

The 'timestamp' column in the DomainEventEntry table only stores ISO 8601 timestamps. If all times are stored in the UTC timezone, they need a column length of 24 characters. If you use another timezone, this may be up to 28. Using variable length columns is generally not necessary, since time stamps always have the same length.

The 'type' column in the DomainEventEntry stores the Type Identifiers of aggregates. Generally, these are the 'simple name' of the aggregate. Event the infamous 'AbstractDependencyInjectionSpringContextTests' in spring only counts 45 characters. Here, again, a shorter (but variable) length field should suffice.

By default, the MongoEventStore will only generate the index it requires for correct operation. That means the required unique index on "Aggregate Identifier", "Aggregate Type" and "Event Sequence Number" is created when the Event Store is created. However, when using the MongoEventStore for certain opertaions, it might be worthwile to add some extra indices.

Note that there is always a balance between query optimization and update speed. Load testing is ultimately the best way to discover which indices provide the best performance.

XStream is very configurable and extensible. If you just use a plain XStreamSerializer, there are some quick wins ready to pick up. XStream allows you to configure aliases for package names and event class names. Aliases are typically much shorter (especially if you have long package names), making the serialized form of an event smaller. And since we're talking XML, each character removed from XML is twice the profit (one for the start tag, and one for the end tag).

A more advanced topic in XStream is creating custom converters. The default reflection based converters are simple, but do not generate the most compact XML. Always look carefully at the generated XML and see if all the information there is really needed to reconstruct the original instance.

Avoid the use of upcasters when possible. XStream allows aliases to be used for fields, when they have changed name. Imagine revision 0 of an event, that used a field called "clientId". The business prefers the term "customer", so revision 1 was created with a field called "customerId". This can be configured completely in XStream, using field aliases. You need to configure two aliases, in the following order: alias "customerId" to "clientId" and then alias "customerId" to "customerId". This will tell XStream that if it encounters a field called "customerId", it will call the corresponding XML element "customerId" (the second alias overrides the first). But if XStream encounters an XML element called "clientId", it is a known alias and will be resolved to field name "customerId". Check out the XStream documentation for more information.

For ultimate performance, you're probably better off without reflection based mechanisms alltogether. In that case, it is probably wisest to create a custom serialization mechanism. The DataInputStream and DataOutputStream allow you to easilly write the contents of the Events to an output stream. The ByteArrayOutputStream and ByteArrayInputStream allow writing to and reading from byte arrays.

Especially in distributed systems, Event Messages need to be serialized in multiple occasions. In the case of a Command Handling component that uses Event Sourcing, each message is serialized twice: once for the Event Store, and once to publish it on the Event Bus. Axon's components are aware of this and have support for SerializationAware messages. If a SerializationAware message is detected, its methods are used to serialize an object, instead of simply passing the payload to a serializer. This allows for performance optimizations.

By configuring the SerializationOptimizingInterceptor, all generated Events are wrapped into SerializationAware messages, and thus benefit from this optimization. Note that the optimization only helps if the same serializer is used for different components. If you use the DisruptorCommandBus, serialization can be optimized by providing a Serializer in the DisruptorConfiguration. The DisruptorCommandBus will then use an extra thread (or more when configured) to pre-serialize the Event Message using that serializer.

When you serialize messages yourself, and want to benefit from the SerializationAware optimization, use the MessageSerializer class to serialize the payload and meta data of messages. All optimization logic is implemented in that class. See the JavaDoc of the MessageSerializer for more details.