Semantic Systems Engineering for Structured Software
Modern systems already contain the right ideas:
- Entities
- State transitions
- Workflows
- Projections
- Indexes
- Queries
- APIs
- Event streams
- Durable orchestration
The problem is not missing concepts. The problem is fragmentation. Cohesive Systems unifies these ideas under one principle:
Make semantics explicit and layer execution around them.
This is not a new paradigm. It is a disciplined realization of separation of concerns.
- Semantic Systems Engineering for Structured Software
- The Core Principle
- The Architecture at a Glance
- Semantics vs Execution
- What Cohesive Is Not
- Why This Matters
- References
The Core Principle
Semantics are stable. Infrastructure is replaceable. Cohesive divides systems into five building blocks:
- Cohesive Entities & Transitions: state semantics
- Cohesive Relations: observation semantics
- Cohesive Processes: coordination semantics
- Cohesive Presentation: interface boundary
- Cohesive Host: infrastructure binding
Each has a single responsibility. Each composes with the others. None bleed into each other.
The Architecture at a Glance
Concern | Semantic Layer | Execution Layer |
State | Entities & Transitions | Process Engine |
Observation | Relations | Relations Engine |
Coordination | Processes | Process Engine |
Interface | Presentation | Host-bound runtime |
Infrastructure | — | Host |
Two axes define the system:
- State (what exists and how it changes)
- Observation (how state is viewed and transformed)
Execution is layered underneath.
Semantics vs Execution
Cohesive deliberately separates semantics from execution:
Axis | Semantics | Execution |
State | Entities & Transitions | Process Engine |
Observation | Relations | Relations Engine |
This symmetry allows:
- Deterministic modeling
- Replaceable runtime
- Incremental scaling
- Multi-region architectures
- ML integration without architectural mutation
What Cohesive Is Not
- Not an ORM
- Not a workflow engine
- Not a query DSL
- Not an ETL tool
- Not a framework that replaces everything
It is a semantic architecture. It clarifies boundaries engineers already believe in:
- Business logic vs infrastructure
- Domain model vs persistence
- Workflow vs transport
- Projection vs mutation
It simply makes those separations formal and composable.
Why This Matters
Most enterprise systems fragment into:
- ORM layer
- Service layer
- Workflow engine
- Search indexing pipeline
- DTO mapping
- Event bus
- ETL jobs
- ML pipelines
Each re-implements relational semantics differently. Cohesive unifies them under explicit semantic layers.
The result:
- Deterministic behavior
- Reduced duplication
- Easier reasoning
- Replaceable infrastructure
- Safer evolution
- Cleaner scaling
References
Cohesive Foundations
Cohesive Perspectives