Enterprise-Grade System Design & Architecture
This senior-level architectural design prompt provides comprehensive guidance for building an enterprise-grade men's eCommerce platform focused on fashion and accessories. It emphasizes production-ready system design with high scalability, security, observability, and cloud-native deployment capabilities.
The prompt covers complete architecture design including React + TypeScript frontend, Spring Boot backend, MySQL database, Apache Solr search engine, Redis caching, comprehensive observability with ELK stack and Grafana, Docker containerization, AWS cloud architecture, and enterprise security best practices. Focuses on architecture and design rather than implementation code.
Full product catalog, cart, checkout, order management, user accounts, wishlist, and admin back-office operations
Full-text search, faceted navigation, autocomplete, synonym handling, relevance tuning, and search analytics
JWT authentication, Google OAuth, Spring Security, RBAC, password hashing, MFA, GDPR compliance, and WAF protection
ELK stack logging, OpenTelemetry tracing, Prometheus metrics, Grafana dashboards, correlation IDs, and SLOs
## 📌 Prompt: Enterprise-Grade Men's eCommerce Platform – System Design & Requirements **Role & Context** You are a **senior solution architect and enterprise software designer**. Design a **production-ready, enterprise-grade Men's eCommerce platform** with high scalability, security, observability, and cloud readiness. Do **not write application code** unless explicitly asked. Focus on **architecture, requirements, workflows, integrations, and best practices**. --- ### 1. Business Overview & Goals Design a full-stack online shopping platform focused on **men's fashion and accessories**, supporting: * High traffic and seasonal spikes * Secure authentication (traditional + social login) * Advanced product search and discovery * Smooth shopping and checkout experience * Strong observability, monitoring, and alerting * Cloud-native deployment with high availability and disaster recovery The system must follow **enterprise software standards** suitable for long-term scaling and team collaboration. --- ### 2. Architecture & Technology Expectations Define a **modern, scalable architecture** with clear separation of concerns: * **Frontend:** React + TypeScript (responsive, modular, production-ready UI) * **Backend:** Spring Boot (RESTful APIs, microservices-friendly) * **Database:** MySQL (transactional data) * **Search Engine:** Apache Solr (full-text search, facets, autocomplete) * **Caching:** Redis (sessions, cart, product data) * **Security:** JWT-based authentication with Spring Security * **API Documentation:** OpenAPI / Swagger Explain **why each technology is chosen** and how they interact. --- ### 3. Authentication & Security Requirements Design a secure authentication and authorization system that supports: * Username/password authentication * Google OAuth social login * JWT-based stateless sessions * Role-based access control (users vs admins) * Secure password hashing and validation * Optional MFA for sensitive operations * Secure handling of password reset and account changes Include **security best practices** across network, application, and data layers. --- ### 4. Product Catalog & Search Define a robust product catalog system with: * Hierarchical categories * Attributes: size, color, brand, material, season * Multiple images and rich descriptions * Inventory tracking and pricing * Apache Solr-powered: * Full-text search * Faceted filters * Autocomplete & synonym handling * Relevance tuning Include **analytics signals** such as search popularity and conversion tracking. --- ### 5. Shopping Cart & Checkout Design a cart system that: * Works for guest and logged-in users * Persists across sessions * Supports add/remove/update/save-for-later * Applies promotions and validates inventory * Uses Redis for performance + MySQL for durability * Tracks cart abandonment for marketing follow-ups Describe a **multi-step checkout flow** from address to payment confirmation. --- ### 6. Order Management Define the complete order lifecycle: * Order creation and validation * Inventory updates * Payment authorization * Status tracking (processing → shipped → delivered) * Order history for users * Admin tools for refunds, cancellations, and customer support --- ### 7. User Account & Personalization Design user account features including: * Profile management * Multiple delivery addresses * Password and preference management * Wishlist * Order history and reordering * Preference tracking for personalization * GDPR-compliant data handling (export & deletion) --- ### 8. Admin & Back-Office Capabilities Define admin tools for: * Product and category management (bulk operations) * Order processing and fulfillment * User support and account management * Sales, inventory, and revenue analytics * Exportable reports and KPIs --- ### 9. Observability, Logging & Tracing Design full observability using: * **ELK Stack:** Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana * **Structured JSON logging** * Correlation / trace IDs * Filebeat for log shipping * Dashboards for errors, latency, traffic, and business metrics --- ### 10. Distributed Tracing & Metrics Implement: * OpenTelemetry instrumentation * Grafana Tempo for tracing * Prometheus for metrics * Grafana dashboards for: * API latency * DB & cache performance * Order processing flows * Business KPIs Include alerting strategies and SLOs. --- ### 11. Local Development Environment Design a **Docker Compose–based local environment** including: * Backend * Frontend * MySQL * Redis * Solr * Elasticsearch * Kibana * Prometheus * Grafana * Tracing backend Include service dependencies, health checks, volumes, and dev-friendly setup. --- ### 12. Containerization Strategy Define: * Multi-stage Docker builds * Secure, minimal runtime images * Non-root containers * Health checks * Image scanning and best practices --- ### 13. AWS Production Architecture Design AWS infrastructure supporting: * Multi-AZ high availability * VPC with public/private subnets * Application Load Balancer * ECS or EC2 with Auto Scaling * RDS MySQL (Multi-AZ + read replicas) * ElastiCache Redis * CDN for static assets * Secure networking and IAM --- ### 14. Scalability & Performance Explain strategies for: * Horizontal scaling * Cache-aside pattern * Read replicas * Load-based auto scaling * Query optimization * CDN usage * Async processing --- ### 15. CI/CD Pipeline Design a CI/CD pipeline that includes: * Automated builds * Unit, integration, and API tests * SonarQube quality gates * Docker image builds & scans * Blue-green or rolling deployments * Automated rollback * Secrets management via secure stores --- ### 16. Security & Compliance Cover: * Network security * WAF protections * TLS everywhere * Encryption at rest and in transit * Dependency & container scanning * Audit logging and access trails --- ### 17. Testing Strategy Define a comprehensive testing approach: * Unit tests * Integration tests (Testcontainers) * API tests * Load and stress testing * Security testing * UAT workflows --- ### 18. Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Design DR strategies including: * Automated backups * Point-in-time recovery * Cross-region backups * RTO/RPO definitions * Recovery drills * Optional multi-region failover --- ### 19. Documentation & Knowledge Management Specify documentation requirements for: * Architecture diagrams * API references * Deployment runbooks * Incident response playbooks * Developer onboarding guides * Business operations workflows --- **Output Expectations** * Clear, structured sections * Architecture-first explanations * Production-ready best practices * No code unless explicitly requested * Use diagrams (described textually) where helpful
Design-First Approach: This prompt focuses on system architecture and design rather than code implementation. Emphasize clear separation of concerns, technology selection rationale, and workflow diagrams.
Enterprise Standards: Follow enterprise software standards suitable for long-term scaling and team collaboration. Consider high traffic, seasonal spikes, and disaster recovery planning.
Comprehensive Observability: Design full observability from the start with structured logging, distributed tracing, metrics collection, correlation IDs, and actionable dashboards for both technical and business KPIs.
Security by Design: Implement security at every layer including network security, WAF protection, encryption at rest and in transit, audit logging, and GDPR compliance for data handling.
Cloud-Native Architecture: Design for AWS deployment with Multi-AZ high availability, auto-scaling, managed services, and comprehensive CI/CD pipelines with quality gates and automated rollback capabilities.