Bakery Analogy
NCAE’s architecture can be understood through a bakery analogy, which maps the abstract building blocks to something tangible.
The Core: An Empty Bakery
The NCAE Core is like an empty bakery. It provides:
- A large, empty menu — the catalog of available services
- A central control terminal — the interface for interacting with everything
- A door with security — access control
The Core itself has no products. It is the infrastructure that enables everything else, but delivers no value on its own.
The Building Blocks
| Bakery | NCAE |
|---|---|
| Recipe | Service — defines the structure and available fields |
| Ingredients (e.g. sugar from Mumpf, flour from Winti) | Service Instance — the concrete values filled into a service |
| Baking instructions / steps | Phases — the ordered steps executed for a service instance |
| Finished cake | Product — the result: a running, configured service |
A Service is the recipe: it defines what fields exist and what phases will be executed. A Service Instance is a specific order of that recipe with real values filled in. Phases are the baking steps — different recipes may have different phases. The Product is the combination of all of the above: the delivered, working service.
Modules: Stocking the Bakery
Modules bring recipes into the bakery and put finished cakes in the display window.
- Modules add Services (recipes) to the NCAE catalog
- When a Service Instance is created, the module produces the finished product
- Interaction with services happens through the NCAE Core terminal
- Recipe books (modules) receive new editions and are updated independently — existing cakes (running Service Instances) are not affected by updates
Thinking Backwards
When working with NCAE, it helps to think backwards from the desired outcome:
- What should my product be? — Define the end result
- What phases are needed? — Identify the required execution steps
- What fields are needed? — Determine the Service fields (ingredients)
This reverse thinking is the key to designing and understanding services in NCAE.
