withcommon

Withcommon is a software framework and suite of interfaces designed to facilitate shared data and operations across distributed applications. It provides a standardized layer for common resources such as user identities, permissions, preferences, and audit metadata, enabling developers to reuse cross-cutting functionality across services.

Origin and history: The project originated as an open-source initiative in the late 2010s, driven by developers seeking to reduce integration friction in microservices architectures. It emphasizes modularity and interoperability, prioritizing backward-compatible schemas and pluggable adapters for various data stores, protocols, and authentication providers.

Architecture and concepts: Withcommon defines a core API and a collection of resource definitions, contracts, and event formats. It uses a schema-centric approach where common resources are described once and extended by services. It supports REST and GraphQL endpoints, a message bus for events, and adapters for databases, caches, and identity systems. The design encourages a “with” style composition, allowing services to opt in to shared capabilities as needed.

Core features include standardized user and permission models, versioned resource schemas, pluggable persistence and authentication adapters, and built-in auditing and localization hooks. The framework promotes consistency across services while allowing domain-specific customization.

Usage and adoption: It is used by teams aiming to reduce duplication across microservices and to enforce governance across a technology stack. Applications can implement a common adapter layer to access central resources via a uniform API, while preserving service autonomy and flexibility.

Reception: Some analysts note that withcommon can streamline interoperability but may introduce initial complexity and governance overhead. Critics caution against over-generalization that could hinder service-specific optimizations.

See also: Interoperability, Microservices architecture, API contracts, Data governance.