G+D Netcetera’s Forward Publishing powers online news sites and mobile apps for regional newspapers in Germany and Switzerland.
The architecture design involved a reverse-proxy cache in front of content backends with short TTLs to balance throughput and content freshness.
Reworking the backend architecture was deemed necessary due to redundant computation in processing requests for relatively unchanged content.
The new approach aimed to move computation from request time to change time, fetching pre-denormalized content from a content event hub for efficiency.
RAMA was chosen to simplify rendering, event-sourcing, and the database structure, improving system topology.
An incremental content denormalization engine built using RAMA offered real-time, always-up-to-date content for customers.
The transformation led to significant improvements in content propagation speed, system load handling, and database query simplification.
Fully committing to bleeding-edge technology like RAMA carried risks but also drove the team, product, and business to new levels of success.
Taking risks and committing to innovative technology can lead to substantial impacts on product development and business growth.