Software AG Digital Event Services (DES) enables other Software AG products to intercommunicate by exchanging digital events. Digital events are typed and serialized data structures that are used to convey or record information about the execution of a runtime. This information can be application information, such as the state of a business process step, including any associated business data, or it can be system information, for example, how much memory and how many threads an application is using.

Any digital event has a digital event type. Each digital event type has an associated digital event type definition that is created and stored in the digital event type repository for the installation. Digital event types are created by users in a development environment, and subsequently deployed to production installations. The format of the events is based on Google Protocol Buffers.

Digital Event Services uses the publish-subscribe model. Applications can both emit and subscribe to streams of events of a given event type. When publishing a digital event, the originating application emits the event without considering whether other applications might receive the event, or whether the event might be archived to an event repository. On the other hand, applications that are consumers of events subscribe to digital events of a specific event type.

The destinations, also known as destination services, to which events are routed, are not defined at design-time. Instead, a system administrator manages the destination services at run-time.

Communication using Digital Event Services can be persistent or non-persistent. With persistent communication, the delivery of a digital event is guaranteed at least once. With non-persistent communication, the delivery of a digital event is not guaranteed.

A developer may set the delivery preference for a given event type, but the DES administrator controls the final delivery mode.