Architectural Requirements
The chosen architectural design strategy is based on quality requirements. This approach ensures that the system meets key quality attributes and non-functional requirements critical for ClassConnect's success. By prioritising scalability, performance, security, maintainability, and usability, the architectural design is optimized to fulfill these needs.
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Layered Pattern: ClassConnect employs a layered architecture to promote separation of concerns, making the system easier to maintain and extend. Each layer has a specific role, ensuring that changes in one layer do not affect others.
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Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): SOA is used to divide ClassConnect into loosely coupled services. This pattern enhances scalability by allowing individual services to evolve without affecting the entire system.
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Flux: The Flux pattern is applied to manage the unidirectional data flow, particularly within the user interface layer. This ensures a predictable state management approach.
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Peer-to-Peer (P2P): The P2P pattern is utilized for real-time communication within the 3D learning environment. By enabling direct client-to-client connections, this pattern improves scalability and performance, as there is no need for a central server to mediate these interactions.
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Scalability: ClassConnect is designed to handle a large number of users across various educational institutions with minimal performance impact. It must support the ability to scale horizontally, particularly in handling millions of data requests and peer-to-peer connections. The system should scale to accommodate 1 million requests per second.
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Performance: The system must provide low-latency responses and support real-time operations, especially in the 3D environment. The goal is to ensure that critical operations, such as rendering and interaction with 3D models, complete in less than 10 seconds.
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Usability: ClassConnect should be intuitive and easy to use, with a focus on a seamless user experience across all devices. The user interface must be responsive and accessible, ensuring that users with varying levels of technical expertise can navigate and use the system effectively.
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Availability: The system is expected to achieve at least 99.5% uptime, ensuring that users can access the platform whenever needed. This is critical for maintaining the continuity of educational activities that rely on the platform.
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Security: Robust security measures must be implemented, including role-based access control (RBAC) and encryption of data both at rest and in transit. The system must comply with data protection regulations and protect sensitive educational data from unauthorized access.
Overview: SvelteKit is a framework for building web applications using Svelte, a modern JavaScript compiler. It provides server-side rendering, routing, and code-splitting out of the box.
Pros:
- Fast performance due to compile-time optimizations
- Small bundle sizes
- Simple and intuitive syntax
Cons:
- Smaller community compared to React, Next.js, or Nuxt.js
- Fewer third-party libraries and components
Architectural Fit: SvelteKit aligns seamlessly with the architectural patterns employed in ClassConnect, particularly the Flux pattern. Its lightweight and efficient nature is crucial for the interactive 3D environment, ensuring a highly responsive client-side application.
Overview: Next.js is a React framework for building server-side rendered (SSR) and static web applications. It is known for its performance optimizations and developer experience.
Pros:
- Large ecosystem and strong community support
- Excellent performance with built-in optimization features
- Extensive plugin ecosystem and enterprise-level support
Cons:
- Heavier bundle sizes compared to SvelteKit
- Requires familiarity with React and its ecosystem
Architectural Fit: Next.js offers strong support for SSR and static generation, making it suitable for applications that need high performance and SEO optimization. However, the larger bundle size may affect performance in highly interactive applications like ClassConnect.
Overview: Nuxt.js is a Vue.js framework that offers server-side rendering, static site generation, and powerful configurations for building universal applications.
Pros:
- Simplifies complex Vue.js applications with easy configuration
- Strong community support
- Built-in features for SSR and static generation
Cons:
- Vue.js has a smaller ecosystem compared to React
- Bundle sizes can be larger, impacting performance
Architectural Fit: Nuxt.js provides a good balance between simplicity and performance, especially for Vue.js applications. However, its bundle size and performance might not be as optimized for the specific needs of ClassConnect’s 3D environment as SvelteKit.
Reasoning for Final Choice: SvelteKit is selected as the final choice for the meta-framework due to its superior performance characteristics, small bundle sizes, and simplicity. While Next.js and Nuxt.js offer larger ecosystems and additional features, SvelteKit’s compile-time optimizations align perfectly with ClassConnect’s need for a highly responsive and efficient user interface, particularly for its interactive 3D environment.
Overview: MongoDB is a document-oriented NoSQL database that offers high performance, high availability, and easy scalability.
Pros:
- Flexible schema design allows for agile development
- Horizontal scalability through sharding
- Rich query language and indexing capabilities
Cons:
- Lack of built-in joins can complicate some queries
- Higher storage requirements compared to normalized relational databases
- Not ideal for applications requiring complex transactions across multiple documents
Architectural Fit: MongoDB's document model aligns well with the data structure needs of ClassConnect, particularly in managing the dynamic content of the 3D environment. Its scalability supports the system's requirement to handle a large volume of concurrent users.
Overview: PostgreSQL is a powerful, open-source relational database system with a strong reputation for reliability, feature robustness, and performance.
Pros:
- ACID compliance ensures strong data integrity
- Supports complex queries and transactions
- Mature ecosystem with extensive tools and libraries
Cons:
- More complex to set up and maintain compared to NoSQL databases
- Vertical scaling can be more challenging
- Less flexible schema compared to NoSQL databases
Architectural Fit: PostgreSQL’s robustness and ACID compliance make it ideal for applications requiring complex queries and transactions. However, for ClassConnect, which prioritizes flexibility and scalability, MongoDB’s schema-less structure may be more suitable.
Overview: Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance.
Pros:
- Highly durable and available storage solution
- Scalable to accommodate virtually unlimited amounts of data
- Cost-effective for large-scale storage needs
Cons:
- Primarily used for BLOB (Binary Large Object) storage, which may require additional tools for data management
- Latency might be higher compared to traditional databases for frequent read/write operations
Architectural Fit: S3 is ideal for storing large files, such as 3D model assets and educational content, which are integral to the ClassConnect platform. Its ability to scale and provide high availability ensures that these resources are reliably accessible to users.
Reasoning for Final Choice: MongoDB is selected as the primary database for ClassConnect due to its flexibility, scalability, and alignment with the platform’s need to handle dynamic and unstructured data. S3 is chosen for storing large media files and 3D assets, providing a reliable and scalable storage solution. While PostgreSQL offers robust relational capabilities, MongoDB’s document-oriented nature is better suited for the agile and scalable requirements of ClassConnect.
