I am quite new to DDD and have come across a scenario that i'm not to sure how to handle.
I have an application that is used to track vehicles. This application is what will be implementing the "core" of the domain for the business i am working for. Not only is this application going to be used, there will be other utility programs that must be created and used in order to help this "core/main" application function.
for example:
there is an windows service needed that will perform configured queries on a database and return results to an external database that my routing application will use. This windows service has the concept of a QuerySettings class that can be created and is then executed by this application.
Question1:
What do you call utility applications like the above described in DDD? ( it definitely isn't the main core of the domain but it's needed in order for the core application to work )
QUestion2:
Is QuerySettings a domain model? if not what is it and where should it be placed within following the onion architecture?
For question1: You may have a look at Bounded context, I think Bounded context contains a group of Domain models that represent concepts in a subdomain(or a core domain). You may need to map or share domain models in different bounded contexts to handle your business, this depends on your bounded context strategy, share-kernal, anti-corruption-layer(to name a few).
For question2: I have little information of how QuerySettings works but in general it is a domain model but in a generic subdomain, not in your vehicle tracking core domain. In core domain's view, it maybe an infrastructure concept.
Related
I am developing a console application using domain driven design, i tried to keep the domain logic as much as possible into domain entities, but some how, some logic leaked into domain services, so now, do i need to test the domain services, if yes how to do it?
Yes, if they contain logic, they have to be tested.
If the service was properly decoupled, it should be possible to test it with unit tests and dependency injection.
First always make sure that your domain services are stateless.
The usual roles of domain services is stuff like validation and persistence. In those cases simply create mocks/stubs/dummies of infrastructure services that they use, pass them in, inside a unit test and assert certain behavior on those mocks. Business as usual. Sometimes the domain services need entities. Mock and pass those in as well. Assert as usual.
Inevitably someone will chime in with the venerable statement of: "but domain services aren't about persistence". If a domain service deals/uses some persistence mechanism (repository/gateway) to accomplish some responsibility, then it's perfectly reasonable 'english' to state 'its usual role is stuff like persistence'.
With that out of the way. DDD does not make decoupling goals. Good DDD is allowing ALL your business logic to happen in the domain. Making Domain Services stateless accomplishes that. Like VO It makes DS safe to pass around from outside layers. Keeping the API of DS consistent with your ubiquitous language insures they remain as a coherent unit of organization within your domain.
"But DS are not about persistence".. only if the ubiquitous language is not, and it often isn't, so the DS API shouldn't in those cases reflect a persistence mechanism. But it sure as hell can have internal methods that use a hell lot of persistence, and you will need to use mocks/stubs/dummies to get at those suckers in unit tests. Domain Services aren't some architectural scaffolding for keeping your layers separate. They are a unit of organization for higher level domain logic.
Domain Services are all about domain logic, so they should definitely be tested.
It's all the more simple to do since they have very few dependencies, and especially usually no coupling to infrastructure classes doing slow I/O stuff.
The domain layer is at the center of your application and isn't tightly coupled to any other layer, most calls will stay inside its boundaries. If Domain Services want to communicate to the outside world, they'll often use events. Therefore, you should need little to no mocks or stubs when testing them.
It depends on the framework you use. Using C# and depending on project complexity, I would take advantage on DI and factories (if any), or implement some functional tests (retrospectively) with SpecFlow and Moq, given interface contracts you should have written when implementing your domain services. The starting point would consist in installing SpecFlow, and then, you should create a dedicated test project...
http://www.specflow.org/getting-started/
I've been reading about DDD and bounded contexts and I think I'm getting the idea wrong. At first, I liked the idea of subdomains and bounded contexts, I understood it like that: there's a software to be developed, but attacking all at once is too much, so we break it into logical pieces and develop each at once. Another problem we solve is ambiguities on the ubiquitous language.
This led me to think about bounded contexts as basically just folders where I group and bound code related to some specific piece of the application. This code I believed to be made up from things like
The domain model of that bounded context, including abstractions for repositories and services
Infrastructure layer for that bounded context, implementations of repositories and so on
Of course, being the domain model and infrastructure properly separeted within the bounded context.
Reading further, it seems, however, that each bounded context is an entire application on it's own right. It seems, sometimes, that each bounded context has it's own application layer, for instance.
This made me confused, because sometimes I don't want to end up developing tons of applications, I just one to develop one. The bounded context division of the application was supposed to build one app, not many apps to be integrated.
I've seem this question where #MikeSW says both approaches presented by the OP are valid. What I'm asking is about a third structure:
<bc 1>
|_ domain
|_ infrastructure
<bc 2>
|_ domain
|_ infrastructure
|_ application
|_ presentation
At least for all the applications I've seem this makes much more sense. I want one app, not several apps with several presentations, but I still want to be able to break the domain and benefit of things like "bounding the ubiquitous language".
So, is a bounded context a full aplication? Or can a bounded context be used like I understood and felt more useful? There are any problems with my approach?
The domain layer is usually the most complex part of your program, and can also change often due to business requirements and refactoring. So you generally don't want to expose it directly to your presentation layer or other bounded contexts. If you feel that you can expose it, it might be the case that your application logic or use case methods are mixed into your domain layer, or that your program is not large or complex enough to require multiple BC's to begin with. Otherwise, I would go with including the application layer in each BC to protect the domain model's integrity and expose only the commands that need to be called from a use case perspective.
I want one app, not several apps with several presentations, but I
still want to be able to break the domain and benefit of things like
"bounding the ubiquitous language".
You can have a thin application layer for each bounded context, and still have a single presentation layer. This is sometimes called a "composite UI", which should be considered a separate BC in itself. If you need to handle common logic such as authentication, create another application service or facade in the composite UI and have it handle the authentication before in turn calling the application service of an outside BC.
I think most of the examples you see in books and on the web are over-simplified in that they have 1 BC per physical running application (and perform some kind of network communication between them), whereas in the real world you might have a complex application that you need to split into separate logical units, but not run them as separate processes unless the need arrives.
At the end of the day the answer is both. The important thing to take away from bounded context is not how you structure your app, but that you have different spaces where you model specific behavior relating to some context. How you define the boundaries between these contexts is dependent on the problem you need to solve.
There is nothing wrong using namespaces(folders) to define bounded contexts. Like you said most of the time you are simply writing one application. You can also define your bounded context by having separate projects for each context. In this case your presentation layer will reference the project it needs.
There are many right ways to code DDD. You should ask yourself "Am I following the core principle by doing it this way"
The bounded context describes a subset of the complete solution and everything within that context serves that context. So, imo, each context has it's own domain so it could be a separate application or just a subsystem of the same project. The point of the "context" is that the ubiquitous language applies directly TO that context. For example, a User in the Account context might mean something completely different than a User in the Sales context. Each "User" will have different capabilities and follow different rules in each context. Each context needs to be isolated from any other context and are not allowed to share references (unless it's via a 'Shared' context); any communication should be mediated through a service that sits on top of that context. A context doesn't even have to follow DDD to be "DDD compliant" since each context can follow it's own approach (e.g. domain driven, data driven, etc.). Contexts are simply silos that outline a logical section of the business.
Whatever you need to do to prevent direct references across contexts is fine whether that means different namespaces, different assemblies within a solution, or different projects altogether.
The bounded context is the scope on which the code operates. It relies on a domain model, that can be supported by a ORM (or not). It implements different kinds of services (domain services and application services) but its aim is to expose only domain services to its environment. DDD is a service oriented architecture, meant to work as offline as possible and in a loose-coupled way. You may decide to consume your services in different ways. The solution implements different kinds of components, different kinds of layers, different kinds of projects. I believe the most critical attention must concern the model, that should not be distributed across components. Solution design and domain model are orthogonal purposes.
Here is my scenario,
We are developing an ordering application for which the propducts should come from another system which has the product catalogue and rules for product offerability. We communicate with them through webservice.
Forming the service request to get the products involve more business logic for which i have to refer other entities like Address, customer profile , Marketing Strategy Rules , etc.
If i think of making the call inside product repository to populate the product entities , is it appropriate to refer the other entities and have such complex logic inside product repository ?
Some of them suggest to use Application Service , but i am not clear as from my understanding application service talks with domain and infrastructure to complete a specific task. And it will not hold any business logic.
What is the appropriate place and best way to do this ?
I recommend using a domain service and implement it with adapter calling webservice.
Repository strategy means you need to have product as an aggregate in your ordering bounded context. But product category and pricing is not the core domain in ordering bounded context. therefore you may not need product as an aggregate. I think you just need some simple value object in order aggregate to record what product is booked. hide other product' stuff behind a domain service.
An good example is cargo RoutingService mentioned in eric evans' DDD book.
According to DDD repositories should not contain any business logic. They should be simple tools for your domain layer to access and manipulate persisted data. All business logic should be held by domain services, aggregates, entities or value objects.
With all due respect, since this is very clearly written in all DDD manuals I suggest you (re)read them.
Good luck!
A good discussion on architecture:
Domain driven design repository implementation in infrastructure layer
Application layer is good, but their interface must be in the core project
I'm a beginner in DDD and am facing a little problem with architecture.
Our system must be able to export business data in various formats (Excel, Word, PDF and other more exotic formats).
In your opinion, which layer must be responsible for the overall process of retrieving source data, exporting them in the target format and preparing the final result to the user ? I'm confusing between domain and application responsibilities.
And regarding the export subsystem, should implementations and their common interface contract belong to the infrastructure layer ?
Neither Application nor Domain layer or any other 'layer'. DDD is not a layered architecture. Search for onion architecture or ports and adapters pattern for mor on this subject.
Now to the core of your problem. The issue you are facing is a separate bounded context and should go to a separate component of your system. Lets call it Reporting. And as it's just a presentation problem, no domain logic - DDD is not suitable for it. Just make some SQL views, read them using NHibernate, LINQ2SQL, EF or even plain DataReaders and build your Word/whatever documents using a Builder pattern. No Aggregates, Repositories, Services or any other DDD building blocks.
You may want to go a bit further and make all data presentation in your application to be handled by a separate component. Thats CQRS.
I usually take the simple approach where possible.
The domain code implements the language of your domain - The nouns, verbs etc.
Application code creates poetry using this language.
So in your example the construction of the output is an application concern, while the construction of the bits that the application will talk about (since you don't mention it) would the the domain concern.
e.g. if the report consists of sales data, that things like dates, bills, orders etc. would be abstractly constructed in the domain, while the application would concerned with producing documents using these.
If I am developing an application using DDD, where do the infrastrucure and behavior components go? For example, user management, user specific configuration, permissions, application menuing, etc.
These components really have nothing to do with the business requirements being fullfilled by my domain, but they are still required elements of my application. Many of them also require persistance.
It's pretty normal to have non-domain components along with the domain in your project - after all not everything is business domain oriented. Where they belong actually depends on how you structure your solution. In most cases I tend to follow Onion Architecture, so all of my logic is provided by Application Services, regardless if it's domain or non-domain oriented.
Well if you find that your usecases rarely demands information from your core domain joined with application specific, you can probably split that into a separate database. Access this information through Application Service layer, since this layer is suppose to serve your application needs. If that includes user profile persistence etc, that's fine.
But you remember that if you got infrastructural failure and you want to do a rollback with some transaction logs or database backups, you'd probably want all persisted data be roll-backed. So then it's easier to have these domains share a database. Pros and cons - always compromise...
If I know that this application would have minor interaction with it's environment, I would put this in one database and let the application service layer interact with clients.
If I know that there will be several applications/clients I may consider to split database so that Webb application user specifics are stored in separate database. Very hard to say, since I have no overview of all the requirements.
/Magnus