High-Level Architecture

Introduction

Bloomreach Content powers the content and experience management pillar of Commerce Experience Cloud, Bloomreach's digital experience platform. It uses a modern SaaS-based, API-first architecture and is based on the configuration over code principle.

This page provides a first glance, high-level overview of the architectural design of Bloomreach Content. Considering its SaaS-based nature, the focus is on the contact (UI) and integration (APIs, SDKs) points. Internal implementation details are only covered at a very high level.

For a more detailed look under the hood of the SaaS hosting architecture and its resulting quality attributes, please refer to Hosting Architecture.

High-Level Overview

At the highest level, Bloomreach Content is a SaaS-based service providing Delivery APIs, Management APIs, and an Authoring UI. SPA SDKs in different Javascript flavors are available to enable seamless integration into Customer Front-end applications.

The intended usage of these components is as follows:

• Developers use the Management APIs and the Authoring UI to preconfigure content types and site configuration within development projects.
• Developers integrate Customer Front-end applications with the SPA SDKs to consume aggregated page models provided by the Delivery APIs and render the final webpages and/or mobile UIs.
• Content Authors/Editors and Site Editors use the Authoring UI to create and edit content and pages and manage projects and campaigns.

The diagram below shows how these components are interconnected.

Bloomreach Content

Bloomreach Content itself consists of 3 main components: Delivery Tier, Authoring and Config Development, and Repository.

• Delivery Tier
  The Delivery Tier handles Delivery API requests by mapping them to page layouts and content using site configuration managed by Site Developers and Site Editors and stored in the repository.
• Authoring and Config Development
  The Authoring and Config Development application enables:
  • Content Authors and Content Editors to manage content (using the Commerce Experience Cloud webapp)
  • Site Editors and Site Admins to manage pages, components, projects, and campaigns (using the Commerce Experience Cloud webapp)
  • Site Developers to manage content types (using the Commerce Experience Cloud webapp) and site configuration (using the Management APIs) within development projects.
• Repository
  The Repository is where all content and configuration is stored. The Repository is not exposed - developers and users only interact with the Management and Delivery APIs and the Authoring and Config Development application and never directly with the Repository.

Access Control to Authoring and Config Development uses Bloomreach Identity Management.

Bloomreach Content is built on the brCloud hosting platform and offers highly availability capabilities. For more details on the hosting architecture and its quality attributes, see Hosting Architecture.

Customer Front-end and SPA SDK

The Customer Front-end application consumes aggregated page models from the Delivery APIs and renders the final webpages and/or mobile UIs to the client.

SPA SDKs in different Javascript flavors (including plain Javascript, React, Angular, and Vue) enable easy integration with any front-end application. The SDKs implement common functionality such as routing and Experience manager preview integration so that front-end developers can focus on the implementation of customer-specific features.