Engineered the backend architecture for Calm Scope, a curated technology and business article publication platform. Developed as a final project for the Database Systems curriculum, the system utilizes a NoSQL Document Store architecture inspired by enterprise CMS workflows to ensure rapid content delivery and flexible document schemas.
Frontend Github: https://github.com/zidane06-sa/frontendSBDKel9
Backend Github: https://github.com/zidane06-sa/backendSBDKel9
Backend Architecture & Core Responsibilities
Served as the primary Backend Developer, architecting the authentication logic, user management systems, and the core editorial review pipeline.
- API & Framework: Developed a REST API utilizing Express.js (v4.19.2) and Node.js, enforcing strict CORS configurations and JWT validation middleware to manage requests from the Next.js (v15) frontend.
- Frontend Integration: The backend serves a Next.js (v15) client utilizing Radix UI primitives,
shadcn/ui, and Zod schema validation. - Authentication & Security: Implemented stateless user authentication workflows utilizing JSON Web Tokens (JWT). Defined the users collection schema to store metadata and bcryptjs-hashed credentials.
- Editorial Review System: Architected the business logic for the article submission pipeline. Designed role-based access control (RBAC) middleware to distinguish standard users from administrators. Articles default to a 'pending' state and are isolated from public endpoints until explicitly verified and approved by an admin via a secured
PUTrequest.
Database Engineering & Performance Analytics
The project involved benchmarking relational versus non-relational paradigms for CMS workloads.
- Schema Design: Utilized Mongoose ODM (v8.6.3) to interface with the MongoDB database. Adopted a flexible document schema utilizing Polymorphism patterns to handle optional media fields (e.g.,
video_url) without maintainingNULLvalues common in rigid SQL tables. - Benchmarking & Telemetry: Conducted fetch telemetry on 50 data entries. The NoSQL Document Store implementation achieved a response latency of 139.90 ms, demonstrating a 27.84x performance multiplier compared to a PostgreSQL baseline of 3894.80 ms. Test conditions: un-indexed PostgreSQL table, including connection overhead, on a local development environment.
Core Competencies
Backend Development, Express.js, MongoDB, REST API Architecture, JWT Authentication, Database Benchmarking