MeritPath

MeritPath is a platform that helps researchers track and analyze their citations and discover potential collaborators through citation networks.

System Architecture

Our system uses a containerized architecture built on AWS ECS for scalable processing of both synchronous requests and asynchronous tasks.

Components

Containerized Services

• Backend Service (ECS Service 1):

  • Handles API requests, authentication, and business logic
  • Sends jobs to SQS for background processing
  • Auto-scales based on CPU/memory usage during traffic spikes

• Worker Service (ECS Service 2):

  • Processes resource-intensive background jobs
  • Fetches tasks from SQS queue
  • Auto-scales based on queue depth for efficient processing

Infrastructure

• Application Load Balancer: Routes client requests to the Backend Service, providing SSL termination and high availability.

• SQS Queue: Enables asynchronous communication between services, allowing the Backend Service to offload intensive tasks to the Worker Service.

• Frontend Applications: NextJS-based web applications that interact with our system through the Backend Service API.

Database Architecture

Our normalized database schema efficiently stores citation relationships while supporting asynchronous processing workflows:

to be updated

Real-time Updates with Supabase

We leverage Supabase for data persistence and real-time updates:

• Database as a Service: Supabase provides a PostgreSQL database with robust security features and API access.

• Real-time Subscriptions: Our frontend subscribes to database changes, enabling live updates when:

  • Job statuses change (pending → processing → completed)
  • New citation data becomes available
  • User profile information is updated

• Authentication Integration: Seamless integration between Supabase Auth and our application permissions.

System Benefits

This architecture provides several advantages:

• Separation of concerns: Immediate request handling is decoupled from resource-intensive background processing
• Independent scaling: Different components scale based on their specific workloads
• High availability: AWS managed services provide reliability and fault tolerance
• Efficient data management: Normalized database design enables precise querying with minimal joins
• Real-time capabilities: Supabase subscriptions provide instant UI updates without polling

Development

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Deployment

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