Cybermycelium: a reference architecture for domain-driven distributed big data systems

Introduction The ubiquity of digital devices, the infrastructure of today, and the ever-increasing proliferation of digital products have dawned a new era, the era of big data (BD). This era began when the volume, variety, and velocity of data overwhelmed traditional systems that used to analyze and store that data. This precipitated a new class of software systems, namely, BD systems. Whereas BD systems provide a competitive advantage to businesses, many have failed to harness the power of them. It has been estimated that only 20% of companies have successfully implemented a BD project. Methods This study aims to facilitate BD system development by introducing Cybermycelium, a domain-driven decentralized BD reference architecture (RA). The artifact was developed following the guidelines of empirically grounded RAs and evaluated through implementation in a real-world scenario using the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM). Results The evaluation revealed that Cybermycelium successfully addressed key architectural qualities: performance (achieving <1,000 ms response times), availability (through event brokers and circuit breaking), and modifiability (enabling rapid service deployment and configuration). The prototype demonstrated effective handling of data processing, scalability challenges, and domain-specific requirements in a large-scale international company setting. Discussion The results highlight important architectural trade-offs between event backbone implementation and service mesh design. While the domain-driven distributed approach improved scalability and maintainability compared to traditional monolithic architectures, it requires significant technical expertise for implementation. This contribution advances the field by providing a validated reference architecture that addresses the challenges of adopting BD in modern enterprises.