Event-Driven Integration: Platform Events vs CDC vs Outbound Messages

By Avijit Patra11 min read

Choose the right event mechanism for your integration architecture with real-world decision criteria.

When to Use Each

Architecture Pattern

Producer (Salesforce) → Event Bus → Consumer (MuleSoft/Kafka) → Target Systems

For 20-second external API calls, never block the transaction. Use Queueable or Platform Events to hand off to middleware with retry and circuit breaker patterns.

Error Handling

Implement dead letter queues, exponential backoff, and idempotency keys. Log every event with correlation IDs for end-to-end tracing.

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