Pipes and Filters

Compose sequential processing via independent filters connected by pipes; foundation for ETL, streaming, and reactive pipelines.

What it is

An integration style where data flows through a series of filters (transformations), connected by pipes (channels), enabling composability and reuse.

Benefits

  • Loose coupling and composability
  • Parallelization and scalability
  • Testable, reusable processing stages

Trade-offs

  • End-to-end latency across many stages
  • Error handling and backpressure management
  • Observability across distributed pipelines

When to use

  • ETL/ELT and data transformation
  • Streaming and event processing
  • Workflow orchestration with reusable steps