Concepts

Overview

Orbital is a platform for building server-based applications and services. At a high level, a typical Orbital-based system consists of four primary layers:

1. Server-side services, responsible for domain logic and orchestration
2. API endpoints, providing structured access to system data and operations
3. A customer-facing web client, fully customizable per application
4. A back-office interface, used for administration, configuration, and operational control

While this structure is common across modern server-side platforms, Orbital differs fundamentally in how data is defined, stored, accessed and manipulated.

Unified Data Model and Interface Generation

Orbital is built around a single, unified mechanism for defining and manipulating data structures. These structures act as the authoritative source for both system behavior and external interfaces. From them, Orbital automatically derives:

• API endpoints used to read data for customer-facing applications
• API endpoints used to modify data through the back-office interface
• The corresponding back-office user interfaces required to query, inspect, and manipulate that data

This eliminates the need to manually maintain parallel implementations of data models, APIs, and administrative tooling, significantly reducing duplication and structural drift over time.

Consistent Change Handling and Versioning

All changes to data, regardless of type or origin, are processed, stored, and versioned through the same underlying mechanisms. This provides a consistent and auditable history of application state in all areas of the platform.

Combined with a small set of core capabilities, this approach allows Orbital to support a wide range of server-based applications with a comparatively very small and easily maintainable codebase. The result is an extremely fleixble platform designed for long-term adaptability, reduced complexity, and controlled system growth.