Platform-enabled Website - Architecture

Architecture

A platform-enabled web application exchanges data with plug-in applications. When designing a platform, it is necessary to determine what data is exposed by the platform and under what conditions. This exchange of data is fundamental to the design of a platform-enabled website. Designed correctly, the platform and the applications that extend it are loosely coupled, yet maintain a seamless look and feel.

A loosely coupled relationship between the platform and a plug-in application exists when:

  • the platform does not depend on the plug-in application (i.e., the platform will still operate even if a plug-in is removed);
  • plug-in applications can be added and removed easily;
  • there is a well-defined interface for communication between the platform and the plug-in application;
  • unexpected termination or errors in a plug-in application will not be detrimental to the platform;
  • there are minimal expectations about the internal operation of each component (i.e., the platform and the plug-in application are black boxes).

Read more about this topic:  Platform-enabled Website

Famous quotes containing the word architecture:

    No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.
    John Ruskin (1819–1900)

    All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

    For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)