Most common integration patterns

Most products talk about the integration pattern their platform is capable of supporting. In the modern microservice architecture - If you put together the list of integration strategies that that possibly be applied in any platform, I think they can be broadly categorised into a 5 main integration patterns.

Here is an attempt from me to classify theses integration pattens and recommendation on when they should be used:

	Pattern	Scenario	Usage Reccomendation
1	Remote Procedure Call—Request and Response	Invokes a process on a remote system, wait for completion of that process, and then tracks state based on the response from the remote system.	To be used for sequential processes where parallel processing of resources is not an acceptable solution. Essentially Synchronous processes.
2	Remote Procedure Call—Fire and Forget	Invokes a process in a remote system but do not wait for completion of the process. Instead, the remote process receives and acknowledges the request and then hands off control back to caller.	To be used when you need to remove dependency on system's processing latency. Essentially Asynchronous processes.
3	Batch Data Synchronization	Data is processed at a fixed frequency interval in batch processes	To be used when Real-time data processing is not a success factor. Also, for large data-sets which can be processed in non-peak hours to avoid performance impact.
4	Event stream notification	The integrating destination system automatically updates as a result of changes to Source data through event streaming.	To be used for real time processing in a producer-consumer interaction model where ensuring delivery is critical. Also, when dealing with legacy system (coupled with circuit breaker pattern to avoid throttle conditions) and in scenarios when throughput is a governing factor.
5	Data Virtualization	Accesses external data in real time. This removes the need to persist data in source system and then reconcile the data between source and the external system.	To be used in cases where storing external data is not possible due business or technical limitation/needs.

If you can choose the right integration pattern in your integration design phase for your specific business case, building an integration that is fit for purpose gets easier.

Reference:

You should also read the integration patterns discussed at Pattern Summary | Integration Patterns and Practices | Salesforce Developers