Saga Patterns Exposed: Why the Orchestration-Choreography Choice Is More Complex Than You Think

Choosing between orchestration and choreography isn't merely about workflow complexity—it fundamentally shapes your system's throughput, visibility, and operational resilience for years. Orchestration excels at managing complex workflows and guaranteed compensation but risks becoming a bottleneck; choreography delivers high throughput and loose coupling but hides saga state and can mask compensation failures. The key insight is that most production systems use both strategically, choosing each based on specific workflow characteristics rather than adopting a single dogmatic approach.