Nexus PIM

Nexus PIM is a distributed, event-driven Product Information Management platform built with Kotlin and Spring Boot.

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

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1. What is PIM?

A Product Information Management (PIM) system centralizes and manages all product-related information across an organization.

Unlike ERP systems that manage transactional data (orders, stock, finance), PIM focuses on:

• Product metadata
• Dynamic attributes
• Localization
• Media assets
• Category classification
• Channel-based overrides
• Versioning & publishing lifecycle

Nexus PIM acts as the Single Source of Truth for product information across multiple channels such as:

• E-commerce platforms
• Mobile applications
• Marketplaces
• Internal systems

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2. Sub-Domains

The system follows Domain-Driven Design (DDD) principles.

Core Domains

Catalog

• Product (Product Family)
• Variant (SKU)
• Variant Axis (e.g., color, size)

Attribute Management

• Attribute
• Attribute Set
• Attribute Group
• Category-based validation rules
• Dynamic value types

Taxonomy

• Category hierarchy
• Category-to-attribute-set mapping

Workflow & Versioning

• Snapshot-based version control
• Draft / Approved / Published lifecycle
• Active snapshot model

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Supporting Domains

Content

• Multi-language fields (name, description, SEO)
• Locale fallback strategy

Media

• Asset metadata
• Product-media relationships

Search

• Elasticsearch projection
• Channel-aware resolved documents
• High-performance filtering & faceting

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3. ERD (High-Level)

Below is a simplified high-level relational model.

CATEGORY
 |- id (PK)
 |- parent_id (FK -> CATEGORY.id)
 +- code

ATTRIBUTE_SET
 |- id (PK)
 +- code

ATTRIBUTE
 |- id (PK)
 |- code
 |- data_type
 |- scope (PRODUCT | VARIANT)
 |- is_localizable
 +- is_channel_overridable

ATTRIBUTE_SET_ATTRIBUTE
 |- attribute_set_id (FK)
 |- attribute_id (FK)
 |- is_required
 +- constraints_json

PRODUCT
 |- id (PK)
 |- code
 |- category_id (FK)
 +- status

PRODUCT_VARIANT
 |- id (PK)
 |- product_id (FK)
 |- sku
 +- status

CATALOG_SNAPSHOT
 |- id (PK)
 |- version_no
 +- status

ATTRIBUTE_VALUE
 |- id (PK)
 |- snapshot_id (FK)
 |- entity_type (PRODUCT | VARIANT)
 |- entity_id
 |- attribute_id (FK)
 |- channel_id (nullable)
 |- locale (nullable)
 +- typed value columns

The system supports:

• Dynamic attribute modeling
• Channel-based override resolution
• Snapshot-based versioning
• Locale-aware values

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4. Tech Stack

Backend

• Kotlin
• Spring Boot 3
• Spring Data JPA
• Flyway

Database

• PostgreSQL (Transactional Write Model)
• Elasticsearch (Search & Read Model)
• Redis (Caching Layer)

Messaging

• Kafka (Event Backbone)

Observability

• Micrometer
• Prometheus
• Grafana
• OpenTelemetry

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5. Infrastructure

The platform is designed to run in containerized environments.

Local Development

• Docker Compose
• PostgreSQL
• Kafka
• Elasticsearch
• Redis

Production (Planned)

• Kubernetes
• Horizontal scaling
• Distributed logging & tracing
• Centralized monitoring

Architectural principles:

• Database per service
• No shared database access
• Event-driven synchronization
• Eventual consistency
• Idempotent consumers

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6. Microservices

Nexus PIM is structured as a microservices architecture.

Service Responsibility

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catalog Product & Variant management attribute Dynamic attribute definitions & validation taxonomy Category hierarchy content Localization media Media metadata workflow Versioning & publishing lifecycle search Elasticsearch projection & search API

Each microservice:

• Owns its database
• Exposes REST APIs
• Publishes domain events
• Communicates asynchronously via Kafka

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License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

See the LICENSE file for details.