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Use cases

If you consider using wolkenkit, there are scenarios that fit better and of course also a few that fit less well. In the following, a variety of scenarios is presented as examples, and evaluated how well they are suitable as use cases for wolkenkit. Naturally, there is no clear dividing line here. The mentioned examples serve rather as indicators, and require an individual interpretation from case to case.

If you have questions on whether your use case should be implemented with wolkenkit, feel free to contact the native web to discuss your ideas.

Bad use cases

The following examples show use cases that are for various reasons less suitable for the use of wolkenkit. Please note that the individual reasons are more important than the specific examples.

Data-driven applications

Data-driven applications are based on CRUD, i.e. they only use the four verbs create, read, update and delete for modeling and accessing data. This is adequate for simple use cases that actually only store and retrieve data without additional logic, such as forms over data or storing data from sensors.

In contrast, wolkenkit is based on the assumption that applications represent complex domains with extensive business logic, and hence uses event-sourcing rather than CRUD. To benefit from the advantages of event-sourcing, you first have to model your domain using domain-driven design. This may be too much effort for very simple domains.

Hard real-time

Hard real-time applications require reliable and extremely accurate time management. Typical applications include audio sequencing and some robotics scenarios. Since wolkenkit is based on JavaScript and Node.js and these technologies do not offer real-time capabilities, wolkenkit is not real-time capable either.

Hard consistency

Applications that require hard consistency typically prefer consistency to availability. In other words, for these applications it is better to go down than to display stale data. This is required, for example, by systems that are life-critical or otherwise affect the health or safety of humans and animals.

wolkenkit is based on eventual consistency, which means that data may only be updated after a short period of time. This gives up the hard consistency for better availability, and is fine for many applications such as typical business applications. Additionally, this approach is well-known and successfully used by various large-scale social media platforms, e.g. Facebook and Twitter.

Single-process and embedded applications

Single-process and embedded applications typically run on very limited and constrained hardware. This is required, for example, by applications that act as machine controllers and are executed on a SoC or other limited environments such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi.

Since wolkenkit is designed as a distributed system and based on Docker, it is (at least right now) not suitable for these environments.

Lightweight runtime environment

While not currently available, a lightweight wolkenkit runtime environment could be done. If you are interested in this, please contact the native web.

Good use cases

The following examples show use cases that are well suited for the use of wolkenkit. Please note that the individual reasons are more important than the specific examples.

In-depth domain knowledge

In-depth domain knowledge and a sound understanding of the essential business processes are a valuable component of successful software development. This is especially true for interdisciplinary teams, which is also the reason why the use of domain-driven design in such teams is particularly useful and helpful.

Since wolkenkit allows you to seamlessly transform domain knowledge into code while abstracting away the technical details, it leads to more readable and understandable code.

Historical data

Historical data is a valuable asset in many applications, which can be used, for example, to generate reports or analyze data. Typically, the collection of historical data is not planned in many applications, which makes implementation time-consuming.

Since wolkenkit is based on event-sourcing and therefore stores all events that have happened in your domain, it provides historical data without further ado. This empowers you to learn from the past and get new insights into your domain, even back in time. This way you will get answers to questions of which you do not know today that you will ask them tomorrow.

Soft real-time

Soft real-time is becoming increasingly important for applications, as digital collaboration becomes more and more popular. However, push notifications and live updates of already delivered data are quite difficult to implement, if you want to get the details right.

Fortunately, wolkenkit comes with built-in support for soft real-time. This makes wolkenkit an ideal platform for collaborative web applications in which different users manage a shared state, similar to what you may know from Trello or other collaboration tools.

High availability

High availability and scalability are important factors for successful web and cloud applications. By using eventual consistency and preferring availability to hard consistency, wolkenkit enables your applications to scale with confidence. You can even scale the write and the read model of your application independent of each other, without having to care about the technical details in your code.

API design and backend prototyping

From time to time there are specific ideas for domains that could be worth implementing. In the past, this was a time-consuming process, because in addition to the actual domain, the technical foundation always had to be developed, too.

With wolkenkit this additional effort is no longer necessary as it enables you to focus exclusively on the domain. This way, you can rapidly try out and evaluate ideas. In the end, wolkenkit allows you to build and maintain an API for your business efficiently.