The real-time wave is here. Everyone wants their dashboards updating live, user events reacting instantly, and systems “just working” in milliseconds.
But let me be clear: not everything needs to be real-time. In fact, very few things do.
Use Cases That Deserve Real-Time
Fraud detection. Every millisecond counts.
Logistics or location tracking.
Real-time bidding or marketplaces.
For most other business needs? Batch is just fine. Micro-batch is even better.
When You Go Real-Time, Know This:
You’re introducing a whole new operational burden.
Monitoring, retries, deduplication—everything gets harder.
Exactly-once delivery is mostly a myth. You’ll need idempotency everywhere.
What I Recommend:
Start with clear latency SLAs: Do you really need it in under 5 seconds?
Use CDC when you can: It’s the perfect middle ground for many analytics use cases.
Invest in observability early: Real-time failures are subtle and often invisible until it's too late.
Real-time data is a tool, not a goal. Use it where it adds business value—not because it sounds exciting in a stakeholder meeting