Design Principles
Loose Coupling
One of the core principles of this project is that of loose coupling. We want to build sets of components that can be separated from each other easily, thus allowing re-mixing of solutions, a high degree of code sharing, and simple replacement of components.
Micro Services - DEPRECATED
Original: The micro service concept is a powerful way to achieve loose coupling. In comes down to this: instead of putting all of your API services into one project, you spread them out into several coherent packages, each of which is ideally installed separately. This lowers your risk when it is time to update or replace components. Because FlightNode software is likely to be installed on low budget shared servers, literally having separate service installs might be a hassle, so we’ll try to build services in such a way that they can run standalone or integrated with other projects.
Micro services are a great concept, but the separation of code into many different services was proving to be a burden with respect to development, coding, and deployment. This burden might be worthwhile in an enterprise environment with real-world scalability problems, but the benefits in this situation are too small to be worth the cost. Therefore the API services have been consolidated into a single .NET solution, although it still contains multiple projects / assemblies.
Careful Encapsulation
Along with these principles, we will be careful to encapsulate object and package data in ways that foster loose coupling without dragging the project down into too much complexity. On the API side, we’ll use the Onion Architecture concept with a focus on good Domain design. Infrastructure classes - that is, concrete realizations of I/O interfaces - will be implemented in separate libraries. In this way, Domain projects need not change if the persistence layer changes, for example from SQL Server to MySQL or even from one ORM to another.
System Design
Interaction
Typical interaction with secured component:
O Identity DataCollection Database
/|\ -------- -------------- ----------
| --> Authenticate
/ \ <-- (token)
(token,data) -------> SubmitData
Validate <----- (token)
(data) -----------> Save
Component Projects
FlightNode.Demo
Angular.js website serving as a demonstration / reference implementation of the FlightNode platform.
FlightNode.Api
WebApi / .NET 4.5.2 solution containing the back-end code for FlightNode. Consists of the following projects:
- Common: contains a handful of general utilities / shared code used across the other projects.
- Common.Api: contains some API-specific shared code used in the other projects.
- DataCollection: provides data collection and reporting capabilities.
- Identity: based on ASP.NET Identity, providing authentication and authorization using OAuth2, as well as user management.
- Service: hosts the other two projects as either an IIS website or a stand-alone Windows sevice.
flightnode.github.io
Source files for this website.
Posted with : System Architecture