Core Concepts Overview

Understanding the fundamental concepts and architecture

This section introduces the key concepts you need to understand to work effectively with our platform.

Architecture Overview

Our platform follows a modular, microservices-based architecture:

┌─────────────┐
│   Frontend  │
└──────┬──────┘
       │
┌──────▼──────┐
│  API Gateway│
└──────┬──────┘
       │
   ┌───┴───┬─────────┬─────────┐
   │       │         │         │
┌──▼──┐ ┌──▼──┐  ┌───▼───┐ ┌──▼──┐
│Auth │ │Data │  │Search │ │Queue│
└─────┘ └─────┘  └───────┘ └─────┘

Key Components

1. API Gateway

The API Gateway is the entry point for all client requests. It handles:

• Request routing
• Authentication
• Rate limiting
• Response caching

2. Services Layer

Independent microservices that handle specific business logic:

• Authentication Service: User authentication and authorization
• Data Service: CRUD operations and data management
• Search Service: Full-text search capabilities
• Queue Service: Asynchronous task processing

3. Data Layer

Persistent storage using multiple database types:

• PostgreSQL for relational data
• Redis for caching
• Elasticsearch for search indexing

Design Principles

Our platform is built on these core principles:

1. Modularity: Components are loosely coupled and independently deployable
2. Scalability: Horizontal scaling for high availability
3. Resilience: Fault tolerance and graceful degradation
4. Security: Defense in depth with multiple security layers

Data Flow

A typical request flows through the system as follows:

1. Client sends request to API Gateway
2. Gateway authenticates the request
3. Request is routed to appropriate service
4. Service processes request and queries data layer
5. Response is returned through the gateway
6. Client receives the response

Next Topics

• Data Models
• Security Architecture
• API Design