Understanding Catalyst architecture: Components and workflow

Compute

• At the heart of Catalyst is its serverless compute layer, which offers several ways to run backend code without provisioning or managing servers.

• You can write Functions that are triggered by HTTP requests, database events, or scheduled jobs, allowing you to build lightweight microservices or event-driven backends.

• Catalyst’s AppSail platform lets you deploy full-stack backend apps built with popular frameworks such as Express or Django etc., while Catalyst handles all operational concerns.

• For workflow automation, Catalyst provides Circuits that let you chain functions, APIs, and tasks together using conditional logic to orchestrate complex business processes without writing glue code.

Data & storage

• Applications need flexible data storage, and Catalyst offers options for structured, unstructured, and temporary data.
• The Data Store is a relational database designed with an intuitive interface and robust role-based access control, making it easy to manage your app’s data securely.
• For files, Catalyst provides Stratus Object Storage service, an S3 like Storage service, massively scalable object storage ideal for large datasets such as backups, logs, or multimedia assets.
• To boost performance, an in-memory cache is available to reduce database hits and lower response times.
• Additionally, Catalyst’s Search service lets you perform fast, indexed queries across your data, enhancing the responsiveness of data-heavy applications.

Security & identity management

• Security is baked into Catalyst’s foundation. It supports multiple authentication methods, including Catalyst-native credentials, Zoho accounts, Google sign-ins, and various social logins.
• The API gateway acts as a protective layer, enforcing access controls, applying rate limits, and securing your endpoints against abuse.
• Catalyst also simplifies integration with external services through Connections, which securely manage tokens and authentication lifecycles behind the scenes.

Triggers, automation, & communication

• Catalyst empowers applications to be reactive and intelligent by automating task execution and enabling real-time interactions. 

• Periodic jobs can be scheduled using Job scheduling for activities like report generation or data cleanup.

• Signals, our in-house event listener, automatically invokes functions in response to changes across any Catalyst service or user activity. 

• It supports event triggers from Zoho applications as well as third-party integrations, enabling seamless, real-time workflows across platforms.

• The recently introduced Job Scheduling service extends this functionality by providing granular control over background tasks with features like retries, timeouts, and priority management ideal for processing long-running or batch jobs. 

• For real-time, bi-directional communication, Signals offers an event-driven messaging layer that supports use cases like live chat, dashboards, and collaborative tools. Email and push notifications are also integrated, making it easy to keep users engaged.

AI & machine learning (Zia services)

• Catalyst natively integrates AI/ML capabilities under the Zia brand. Without needing deep data science expertise, developers can use AutoML to build and deploy predictive models.

• Optical character recognition (OCR) and image moderation services enable automatic extraction of text and content filtering from images.

• Text analytics provides insights such as sentiment analysis and keyword extraction. Additionally, face analytics and object detection enable rich media understanding.

• QuickML, a new addition, is a no-code ML solution that instantly generates predictive APIs from your datasets, perfect for common tasks like churn prediction or customer segmentation.

Host & manage

• Catalyst doesn’t just provide development tools ,it offers operational management as well. Slate our Robust Front end  development  service that lets you Deploy,Preview and launch frontend assets with version control.

• Mobile device management ensures secure distribution of Android, iOS, and Flutter apps. Domain mapping connects your custom domains to Catalyst services.

• Comprehensive logging and metrics tools give you real-time visibility into application behavior. Finally, pipelines enable automated continuous integration and delivery, streamlining testing, deployment, and rollback processes.