Project Nucleus

The ARD Play-Out Center in Potsdam, in cooperation with the state broadcasters, is responsible for producing and technically managing the ARD Digital programming lineup. An EPG (Electronic Program Guide) system is used to compile the program information for all ARD television and radio programs.

The goal of the project was to replace a monolithic, hard-to-maintain Java application with an Oracle cluster database with a scalable microservices architecture. The new solution optimizes data storage, processing, and technical interfaces to meet current and future requirements. Over one billion data records were integrated in the process. High scalability was achieved through the modern microservices architecture, which also reduced operating costs.

The modern architecture is based on a distributed MongoDB cluster serving as the central data storage, the core of which we designed and developed. Communication between the microservices takes place via a powerful and flexible GraphQL API. This enables structured access to the data as well as a powerful full-text search. The flexible architecture also facilitates the harmonization of different systems and has enabled various project partners to develop services independently. Collaboration with these partners was successful and seamless.

Key features of the project:

• Processing extremely large volumes of data
• Ensuring high availability
• Simplifying a complex system landscape and designing a future-proof architecture
• Comprehensive logging and reporting for improved traceability and process monitoring
  Design, development, and implementation of the entire system architecture
• Setup of multiple test and staging environments