The Architecture

I’ve been making a lot of noise about the new development and testing of the new site. I thought I might take a minute here and describe the architecture. The new site is basically based on two core technologies. PHP and Java. The front end is basically all written using PHP using a basic form of an MVC design pattern. I was considering using PHP Trax, but frankly I didn’t need or want a framework with so much “stuff” involved.

I am using my own form of web services (again, I needed something more specific rather than SOAP) in order to integrate the front end with the back end. The front end never actually connects directly to the database, instead there’s an extensive middle tier. That is what is written using Java. Basically there’s a servlet, called the service proxy, which handles all requests from the front end. The idea is that the servlet takes XML over HTTP, translates it into java objects, then invokes an engine which handles the specific action, then translates the response (result) objects back into XML and passes that back to the front end. The entire engine mechanism is rather dynamic in that when ever any new functionality needs to be developed, a new engine can be plugged in without effecting any of the existing code. Everything is driven off of a configuration file and a basic set of POJOs (plain old java objects).

The result will be a highly flexible application that can be modified and adapted without impacting the site in any meaningful way. There is nearly 10,000 lines of code so far and with the development about 85% complete, this new site will be one that can finally achieve my original goal from about five years ago, have an infrastructure that can actually grow.

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