In an event-driven architecture, at design time a central catalog allows event consumer(s) to reconstruct an event structure for later processing during runtime. The central event catalog receives from a publisher (of an event producer), an event description document specifying an event identifier, source code of an event class extracted from an event, and an annotation. This event description document is stored by the catalog as a central instance in a database. Upon receiving a query from an event consumer regarding the event, the event description document is returned as a query result. A code generator (of the event consumer) creates the event structure from the event description document, allowing processing of the event. Embodiments are particularly suited to centrally locate a single, up-to-date instance of an event description document, for reference in allowing multiple consumers of an event to accurately reproduce the latest version the structure of that event.