Choreography vs Orchestration

A business workflow often spans several services. Placing an order may involve inventory, payment, shipping, and notifications.

The key question is who controls the workflow.

In choreography, no single service is in charge. Services publish and react to events, and the workflow emerges from those reactions.

In orchestration, one coordinator controls the steps, calls services in order, and decides what happens next.

This chapter covers choreography, orchestration, tracing workflows, failure recovery, operational trade-offs, and when designs mix both.