Plugin Architecture
Vektagraf’s plugin architecture is a critical component of the Hyperstore ecosystem. While the schema defines the structure, security model, provenance behavior, and data semantics of an application, real-world systems often require customizable logic that goes beyond declarative constraints. Plugins provide this extension mechanism while preserving the determinism, safety, and auditability that Hyperstores guarantee.
The fundamental design challenge is enabling extensibility without compromising the invariant-driven, schema-dominant nature of the system. Traditional extensibility approaches — arbitrary code execution, stored procedures, database triggers, user-defined functions — introduce risk, performance unpredictability, and security vulnerabilities. By contrast, Vektagraf’s plugin architecture is designed to be deterministic, isolated, verifiable, and cryptographically accountable.
Design Principles
The plugin architecture is founded on several core principles:
Determinism
Execution of plugin logic must be deterministic across all environments. This ensures:
Reproducible provenance
Consistent results across distributed deployments
Avoidance of nondeterministic states or divergent data evolution
Plugins cannot access nondeterministic primitives (e.g., system time) without passing through Vektagraf’s controlled, provenance-tracked interfaces.
Isolation
Plugins execute within a sandboxed environment with:
No direct access to the database
No uncontrolled network access
No direct filesystem access
No ability to mutate state outside the schema-defined boundaries
Memory and execution quotas
This provides fault isolation and security guarantees.
Verifiability
All plugin executions are:
Logged in provenance
Cryptographically linked via object version chains
Fully replayable
Modeled as pure functions over well-defined inputs
This ensures that any sequence of plugin-driven state transitions is provably consistent.
Non-Bypassability
Plugins cannot override:
Schema-defined constraints
Validation rules
Encryption requirements
Multi-tenancy isolation
Provenance enforcement
The schema remains the supreme authority of the system.
Policy Conformance
Plugins are subject to:
Tenant boundaries
Role/privilege restrictions
Cryptographic policy
Execution quotas
Rate limits
This prevents privilege escalation or accidental leakage across tenants.
Plugin Roles Within the Hyperstore
Plugins extend the Hyperstore in controlled, structured ways. Key use cases include:
Custom Computation
Plugins can perform domain-specific calculations, analytics, or transformations that cannot be expressed declaratively within the schema.
Examples:
Pricing engines
Tax calculation
Scoring algorithms
Custom AI inference wrappers
These computations are pure and deterministic.
Custom Indexing or Lookup Logic
A plugin may:
Compute derived searchable values
Normalize or preprocess fields
Interface with domain-specific search strategies
All indexing results remain consistent with provenance.
External System Integration
Plugins provide controlled access to external resources:
Payment gateways
Identity providers
Messaging systems
Third-party APIs
Outgoing calls are proxied through the Vektagraf control layer, ensuring:
Audit trails
Rate limiting
Policy enforcement
Workflow Extensions
Plugins can implement workflow steps that require custom logic, such as:
Approval logic based on risk scores
Fraud detection heuristics
AI classification steps
However, the workflow graph itself remains schema-driven.
Execution Model
Sandbox Runtime
Each plugin runs inside an execution sandbox that provides:
Deterministic resource availability
Bounded CPU time
Memory ceilings
No global variables
Strict import limitations
This guarantees consistency and security.
Input/Output Contract
Plugins operate on a standardized abstract data representation derived from the schema. Inputs include:
Model instances
References to related data (read-only)
Computed intermediate states
Workflow context
Cryptographically signed metadata
Outputs must:
Conform to schema-defined structures
Respect multi-tenancy boundaries
Respect encryption requirements
Be serializable and verifiable
Provenance Integration
Every plugin invocation produces a provenance entry containing:
Plugin identifier and version
Input hash
Output hash
Execution time
Tenant
Actor (if applicable)
Signatures when required
This allows complete reconstruction and verification.
Security Model of Plugins
Capability-Based Permissioning
Plugins are granted minimal capabilities defined in the schema:
"plugins": { "risk_assessor": { "capabilities": ["http_outbound", "read:transaction", "compute"], "tenant_scoped": true } }
If a capability isn’t declared, the plugin cannot access it.
Tenant Isolation
Plugins can only:
Read data within the tenant boundary
Operate using tenant-specific encryption keys
Write outputs scoped to the same tenant
Cryptographic Accountability
Every plugin is:
Signed using Dilithium
Versioned
Has a verifiable integrity chain
Execution is cryptographically attestable.
Performance Considerations
Plugins introduce extensibility without sacrificing performance:
Hot code paths are optimized and cached
Deterministic resource usage allows precise cost modeling
Sandboxed execution prevents cascading failures
Vectorized execution can be used for frequent plugin flows
Performance isolation ensures that heavy plugin workloads cannot degrade core Hyperstore operations.
Plugin Lifecycle
Registration
Plugins are declared in the application schema, ensuring they are known at compile-time.
Versioning
Plugins follow semantic versioning. Schema references explicitly pin versions to guarantee deterministic builds.
Deployment
Plugins are packaged, signed, and distributed through Vektagraf’s extension system. Deployment is atomic and reversible.
Auditing and Rollback
All plugin executions are logged; rollbacks are possible through provenance chain traversal.
Why Not Stored Procedures?
Stored procedures are imperative, unbounded, nondeterministic, and often insecure. They:
Bypass schema constraints
Negate auditability
Invite privilege escalation
Make versioning difficult
Are not portable
Cannot be easily sandboxed
Vektagraf’s plugin architecture solves every one of these problems with:
Declarative registration
Sandboxing
Deterministic semantics
Cryptographic auditability
Strict separation from storage engine internals
Scientific Significance
Plugins demonstrate the "constrained extensibility" principle seen in:
Capability-based systems
Deterministic distributed systems
Formal methods
Trusted execution environments
Verifiable computation frameworks
By constraining extension rather than preventing it, Hyperstores achieve:
Flexibility
Security
Deterministic behavior
Cross-tenant correctness
Formal reasoning capacity
This makes plugins powerful enough for real applications while still preserving mathematical and security rigor.
No Comments