Everything old is new again. I was rearchitecting a batch mode application to a horizontally scalable event-driven model based on Oracle AQ back in 2005. Designed to handle interval usage measurements from remotely read smart electricity meters, perform ToU aggregation and send data to market participants. At peak the system was managing 2 million reads a day and we kept a rolling 15 month window of reads. Good times. Oracle may be a rubbish company now but AQ was awesome, especially on a RAC database.
Ah, 37Signals, famous for producing mediocre software and the founder and CTO, DHH, telling their employees to “just shut up and work”. what a lovely bunch.