Log Pruning in Distributed Event-sourced Systems

Abstract

Event sourcing is increasingly used and implemented in event-based systems for maintaining the evolution of application state. However, unbounded event logs are impracticable for many systems, as it is difficult to align scalability requirements and long-term runtime behavior with the corresponding storage requirements. To this end, we explore the design space of log pruning approaches suitable for event-sourced systems. Furthermore, we survey specific log pruning mechanisms for event-sourced logs. In a brief evaluation, we point out the trade-offs when applying pruning to event logs and highlight the applicability of log pruning to event-sourced systems.