ARCHITECTURE OF INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR FOOD WASTE MINIMIZATION ACCORDING THE “ZERO WASTE” CONCEPT

Abstract

“Zero waste” is a term that implies waste reduction in order to decrease environmental polution and save planet resources. The problem with waste is very acute in Ukraine. By reducing the amount of waste from food trade and catering, we can reduce the total amount of rubbish. This study presents an information system that aims to help decrease food waste, and is devoted to the design of the architecture of this system. Three architectures were analyzed in this study, which are monolithic architecture, microservice architecture and event-driven architecture, and their advantages and disadvantages were identified. Design decision of the project is based on microservice architecture with event-driven communication which uses CQRS-pattern, which provides for the separation of read operations from write operations. The system is build as distributed and driven by events. Events are published with the help of a modern open source messaging system called NATS. Backend services communicate using publisher-subscriber pattern which NATS service provides and REST-methods are used for client-service message exchange. Implementing the CQRS pattern helps maximize application efficiency, security, and scalability; and also allows developers to separate read and write models that can be optimized for system requirements. Application has the ability to scale to cope with increased load and designed to be easy to evolve. А high-level architecture of the system is proposed in this research. At the initial stage it includes three main microservices. Four system components and one aggregate are also presented in this paper. The basic functionality of the system is outlined in this article and its implementation is represented in the form of a sequence of system elements interaction. Further development of this work is possible in the direction of improving the functionality of existing services and developing new functionality. It is planned to bring the information system to the level of the minimum viable product (MVP).