8. Cross-cutting Concepts
This section describes overall, principal regulations and solution ideas that are relevant in multiple parts (= cross-cutting) of your system.
8.1. Layered Architecture
Each system is built using a layered architecture, with each layer having a specific responsibility.
| Layer | Responsibility |
|---|---|
Displays information to the user and handles user interaction. |
|
Coordinates the application, processes commands, makes queries, and performs calculations. |
|
Represents concepts of the business, information about the business situation, and business rules. |
|
Manages data persistence, caching, and transactional behavior. |
|
Stores and retrieves data. |
8.1.1. Presentation Layer
React
React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. Its component-based architecture promotes reusability and maintainability. The virtual DOM implementation ensures efficient updates and rendering, making the application fast and responsive.
Telerik KendoReact
KendoReact is a professional UI kit that helps design & build business apps with React much faster. It provides a wide range of pre-built components that are fully customizable and easy to integrate, speeding up the development process and ensuring a consistent look and feel across the application.
Vite
Vite is a build tool that provides a faster and leaner development experience for modern web projects. It offers features like hot module replacement and esbuild-powered fast bundling, which significantly improve the developer experience by providing instant server start-up and updates.
TypeScript
TypeScript is a programming language that builds on JavaScript by adding static type definitions. Its static type-checking feature catches errors early in the development process, making the code more reliable and maintainable. It also provides better tooling with features like autocompletion, type inference, and documentation in IDEs.
Tailwind CSS
Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that allows developers to build any design directly in HTML. Its flexibility and efficiency enable developers to create unique designs without leaving the HTML.
ethers.js
ethers.js is a library for interacting with the Ethereum Blockchain and its ecosystem. It provides a complete and compact set of features, including interacting with Ethereum nodes, compiling and deploying Ethereum contracts, and signing and sending transactions.
8.1.2. Application Layer
.NET Core Web API
ASP.NET Core Web API is a framework for building HTTP-based services using .NET Core. It enables a wide range of clients, including browsers and mobile devices, to consume services easily. It supports HTTP content negotiation, allowing services to send and receive data in various formats.
ASP.NET Core SignalR
ASP.NET SignalR is a library that simplifies the process of adding real-time web functionality to applications. It enables server code to push content to connected clients instantly as it becomes available.
ASP.NET Core OData
ASP.NET Core OData is a library for building REST API services that conform to the OData protocol. It defines best practices for consistent and strongly-typed REST APIs, specifying the format of requests and responses, type definition, and service description, as well as features like filtering, querying related data, and pagination.
Humanizer
Humanizer is a .NET library for manipulating and displaying strings, enums, dates, times, timespans, numbers, and quantities. It converts or formats various data types to a human-friendly form, improving the readability of the data.
8.1.3. Domain Layer
.NET (Core)
.NET is a secure, reliable, and high-performance application platform. It provides integrated concurrency, automatic memory management, and strong typing, which make the code more reliable and maintainable.
OpenAI-DotNet
OpenAI-DotNet is a C# .NET client library for OpenAI. It enables developers to interact with the OpenAI API using familiar .NET constructs.
AutoMapper
AutoMapper is a convention-based object-object mapper. It automatically maps between objects, reducing the amount of manual mapping code and making the code cleaner and more maintainable.
8.1.4. Data Access Layer
Microsoft Entity Framework Core
Entity Framework (EF) Core is a lightweight, extensible, open source and cross-platform version of the popular Entity Framework data access technology. It abstracts the database operations, allowing developers to work with .NET objects, and automatically translates those operations to SQL queries.
Nethereum
Nethereum is an open source .NET integration library for blockchain. It provides .NET convenience libraries and utilities for interacting with smart contracts and Ethereum clients.
8.1.5. Data Layer
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS). It provides robustness, scalability, and a wide range of features, including advanced analytics and full-text search. It supports the Transact-SQL (T-SQL) language, which is an extension of SQL and provides additional features for managing and manipulating data.
8.2. Other Important Concepts
8.2.1. Domain Models vs Entities Models and AutoMapper
Entity models are designed to mirror what is necessary for data storage. They are optimized for storage and retrieval of data. Domain models are designed to mirror the real world objects that are represented by the system. They are optimized for the business logic of the system. The data layer and data access layer of the system work with the entity model, the domain layer has knowledge of both models and how to map between them, and the application layer and presentation layer work only with the domain model.
The domain model often has matching properties of the entity model, but should never actually extend the class to avoid misunderstood inheritence. The domain model does not have an "is a" relationship with an entity. Instead, there is some required redundancy in class properties between the two models. This redundancy is managed by the AutoMapper library.
8.2.2. Generic OData API
To reduce redundant query methods written in the system, a generic OData API is provided. This API is based on the OData standard and allows to query any entity in the system. The API is implemented with base classes to provide common functionality and can be extended by custom controllers to provide additional functionality.
| Domain services are used for more than this pattern within the system, which is why they are separate from the application layer, to promote reusability. If every service were only used by a single controller we could combine the two layers. |
8.2.3. Raygun
Raygun is a comprehensive monitoring solution that provides insights into how users are really experiencing your software applications. It offers error, crash, and performance monitoring capabilities.
8.2.4. HTTP, OData, and API client services
HTTP, OData, and API client services are the backbone of communication in the system. They provide a standardized way for different parts of the system to interact with each other. This standardization simplifies the development process and ensures that all parts of the system can communicate effectively.
8.2.5. Inversion of Control
Inversion of Control (IoC) is a design principle used in the system to increase modularity and promote loose coupling. By inverting the control of object creation and binding, the system becomes more flexible and easier to test and maintain.
8.2.6. Background Queue
The Background Queue is a mechanism that allows the system to perform tasks asynchronously. This is particularly useful for tasks that are resource-intensive or time-consuming, as they can be processed in the background without blocking the main execution flow of the system.
8.2.7. Single Sign On
See Single Sign On for more information.
8.2.8. Database Schema Sharing
Database Schema Sharing is a strategy used in the system to allow multiple services to interact with the same database schema. This approach reduces data redundancy and ensures consistency across the system. It also simplifies data management and increases the efficiency of data operations.