The document discusses the evolution of the v3 technology platform led by Manish Pandit at IGN, detailing its transition from a monolithic Java system to a more dynamic architecture involving Scala, MongoDB, and Elasticsearch. It highlights advancements in API consistency, performance improvements, and the challenges that remain, including the need for refactoring and enhancing code coverage. The v3 platform addresses both engineering and business issues, marking a significant upgrade over previous versions.

1. Introduction to V3
Manish Pandit
IGN Engineering

2. And there was …NIB
• Monolithic System
• Built with Java and front ended with JSPs
• Talked to Oracle Database directly
• Disconnected with the publishing
• Publishing achieved via batch jobs that picked
up the articles, ran home grown templating on
the pages to generate a “view”

3. V1
• IGN’s first attempt at SOA
• Almighty NIB stays
• A Java layer was built to talk with Oracle
• Introduced caching with memcached, with
near/far cache architecture
• Templating was replaced with Freemarker
instead of home grown templating

4. V2
• Built to address the engineering problems with V1, not
the business problems
• Almighty NIB stays
• The Freemarker templating stays
• API changed from Java to Rails
• Video and Blogs moved to MongoDB
• Ruby’s performance (or lack of it) bit us in the ass, so
built a Java+Memcached based edge cache
• Used Solr for searches, with RabbitMQ to handle
clustering

5. V3
• NIB is gone (for the most part)
• The APIs changed drastically and a standard was
formed
• Scala was introduced
• Solr replaced by Elasticsearch
• APIs front ended by Varnish
• Addressed engineering *and* business problems
• Went live a week before E3

6. Technology Platform
• Backend
– Scala
– Scalatra
– MongoDB
– ElasticSearch
– Varnish
• Frontend
– Oyster

7. Architecture Diagram

8. Advantages of V3 APIs
• Single, consistent APIs across content and
social APIs
• Less code as level-1 caching is handled by
Varnish
• Common code abstracted out as libraries
• Performance gain over Rails/Middleman
• Faster turnaround time – articles and videos
show up in 2 minutes vs. 20 earlier

9. TODO
• There is a lot of work needed on V3 API
– Enhance and refactor the code to use the
common libraries
– Rebuild Social API on V3 API platform
– Consistency between APIs
– Poor code coverage in tests
– Move up to 2.10.0 when it comes
– Tune ElasticSearch
– …..