Every time we run an UPDATE statement in a database, something disappears. The old value, whatever was there a moment ago, is gone.

In fact, most databases are designed to forget. Every UPDATE overwrites what came before, every DELETE removes it entirely, and the application is left with only a snapshot of the present state. We accept this as normal because it’s the most natural way to think about things.

But what if your system needs to answer a different kind of question: not just “what is the current state?” but “how did we get here?”

That’s the question Event Sourcing is built to answer. And the solution is both more rewarding and more demanding than it first appears. In this article, we will look at Event Sourcing along with its benefits and trade-offs.