Enterprise Integration Hub
This cluster is a decision kit for wiring together a business that sells digitally and fulfills physically — a storefront on one side, a warehouse with pick-and-pack operations on the other, and everything (orders, inventory, money, shipments) flowing between them. The patterns are deliberately open-source-first: every architecture here can be built without a commercial system at its foundation, whether it runs on AWS or on a pile of mini-PCs in a garage.
The cluster sits between two existing bodies of content and leans on both: ArchitectureHub supplies the generic distributed-systems patterns (event-driven architecture, CQRS, sagas, DDD); WarehouseAutomationHub covers the physical operations themselves (WMS concepts, pick-and-pack automation, inventory science, robotics). This cluster is the connective tissue: which systems to run, how they talk, and how the answer changes with scale.
Start Here
- CommerceSupplyChainReferenceArchitecture — the anchor page: the system landscape (storefront, OMS, WMS, ERP), who owns which data, and the four core flows — order-to-cash, inventory sync, procure-to-stock, returns.
- GarageToEnterpriseScaleTiers — the same architecture at three scales: garage modular monolith, growth-stage broker-and-boundaries, and small-cap public-company stack — with the graduation triggers between them.
Choosing Systems (Open Source)
- OpenSourceCommercePlatforms — Medusa, Saleor, Vendure, Sylius, Solidus, WooCommerce, Shopware: runtime, API shape, licensing, and operational weight.
- OpenSourceErpAndWms — Odoo Community + OCA modules, ERPNext, OpenBoxes; when an ERP stock module suffices and when pick/pack needs a real WMS.
The Integration Fabric
- IntegrationPatternVocabulary — the enterprise integration patterns that survived the ESB era: channels, routers, translators, idempotent receivers, dead-letter queues, outbox.
- IntegrationBackboneChoices — RabbitMQ vs Kafka vs NATS as the commerce backbone, sync-vs-async boundary placement, API gateways, and the ESB trap.
- IntegrationMiddlewareAndTooling — Apache Camel, Kafka Connect, Debezium, workflow engines, and the licensing caveats (n8n, Camunda 8) that surprise open-source-first teams.
Keeping It Correct
- DataConsistencyAndSyncPatterns — the dual-write problem, outbox, CDC, idempotency, reconciliation jobs, and honest oversell handling.
- OrderOrchestrationAndSagas — the order lifecycle as a state machine: choreography vs orchestration, compensation, and open-source workflow engines.
Reaching Outside the Boundary