In Eric Evans' Domain Driven Design approach, would it be a good idea to use Rocky Lhotka's CSLA.NET for designing Business Entities for Domain Layer?
Looks like we can do that.
It's been a while since I read the CSLA book, but I do recall that it has support for a N-tier model that allows you to remote your domain objects. While interesting and maybe even useful in some cases, I'd be afraid the added complexity would not be worth it. Personally I would stick with a POCO domain model with an unobtrusive ORM like NHibernate unless my requirements dictated something more complicated.
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Could you please tell me what is the difference between the model Anemic Domain Model and the DDD? what is the most used nowadays ? which model is relevent when using an application the spring framework (spring data ...)?
See Martin Fowler, 2003.
The basic symptom of an Anemic Domain Model is that at first blush it looks like the real thing. There are objects, many named after the nouns in the domain space, and these objects are connected with the rich relationships and structure that true domain models have. The catch comes when you look at the behavior, and you realize that there is hardly any behavior on these objects, making them little more than bags of getters and setters.
The anemic domain model is really just a procedural style design, exactly the kind of thing that object bigots like me (and Eric) have been fighting since our early days in Smalltalk
the problem with anemic domain models is that they incur all of the costs of a domain model, without yielding any of the benefits.
Anemic Domain Model is a bad thing - it's a poorly implemented DDD Domain Model where the domain objects contain little or no business logic. All the logic is in other services.
We're starting a web application using DDD and CQRS (using the ncqrs framework) and before we get started writing our own infrastructure class library, i wanted to see if any are already available.
I'd think at least some basic interfaces and common implementations for writing to the file system, sending emails, etc could be used in any project.
Those types of services are sufficiently context dependent to be unyielding to common frameworks above the facilities provided by the .NET Framework. There may frameworks centered around specific tasks, such as emailing, however you're better of selecting a solution that fits the requirements, instead of the converse. Instead, consider reviewing some sample DDD projects as listed here.
I agree with what eulerfx stated earlier. I'd add that if you depend upon a framework for using DDD and CQRS, then you risk depending on the framework and not truly understanding what is happening. As a result, you may miss what DDD (and CQRS) is providing to you.
I will state that I started off learning about CQRS by using a framework (NCQRS in fact), but my DDD knowledge was based on Evans' book and I didn't look for a framework for modeling my domain. As each domain is unique to the problem, I think it's hard to truly have a framework that "helps" you implement DDD.
In retrospect, I wish I had not gone with NCQRS right from the start as I missed or passed over some of the subtleties of the CQRS pattern.
There are probably some DDD frameworks out there, but I'd recommend forgoing them and build your own. You'll thank yourself later.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
You can try my library CoreDdd, documentation here, blog posts about it here. It contains support for DDD (entities, aggregate roots) and CQRS (commands, queries). No support for writing file system or sending emails, use standard .net for this.
I have been practicing DDD for a while now with the 4 distinct layers: Domain, Presentation, Application, and Infrastructure. Recently, I introduced a friend of mine to the DDD concept and he thought it introduced an unnecessary layer of complexity (specifically targeting interfaces and IoC). Usually, its at this point, I explain the benefits of DDD-- especially, its modularity. All the heavy lifting and under the hood stuff is in the Infrastructure and if I wanted to completely change the underlying data-access method, I could do so with only having to touch the Infrastructure layer repository.
My friend's argument is that he could build a three tiered application in the same way:
Business
Data
Presentation
He would create business models (like domain models) and have the repositories in the Data layer return those Business models. Then he would call the business layer which called the data layer. I told him the problem with that approach is that it is not testable. Sure, you can write integration tests, but you can't write true unit tests. Can you see any other problems with his proposed 3-tiered approach (I know there is, because why would DDD exist otherwise?).
EDIT: He is not using IoC. Each layer in his example is dependent on one another.
I think you're comparing apples and oranges. Nothing about N-Tier prohibits it from utilizing interfaces & DI in order to be easily unit-tested. Likewise, DDD can be done with static classes and hard dependencies.
Furthermore, if he's implementing business objects and using Repositories, it sounds like he IS doing DDD, and you are quibbling over little more than semantics.
Are you sure the issue isn't simply over using DI/IoC or not?
I think you are mixing a few methodologies up. DDD is Domain-Driven Developement and is about making the business domain a part of your code. What you are describing sounds more like the Onion Architecture (link) versus a 'normal' 3-layered approach. There is nothing wrong with using a 3-layered architecture with DDD. DDD depends on TDD (TestDriven Developement). Interfaces help with TDD as it is easier to test each class in isolation. If you use Dependency Injection (and IoC) it is further mitigated.
The Onion Architecture is about making the Domain (a.k.a. business rules) independent of everything else - ie. it's the core of the application with everything depending on the business objects and rules while things related to infrastructure, UI and so on are in the outer layers. The idea is that the closer to the 'shell of the onion' a module is - the easier it is to exchange for a new implementation.
Hope this clears it a bit up - now with a minor edit!
Read "Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach", Chapter 8, Page 100 to 107.
The top-level partitioning is of particular interest to architects because it defines the fundamental architecture style and way of partitioning code. It is one of the first decisions an architect must make. These two styles (DDD & Layered) represent different ways to top-level partition the architecture. So, you are not comparing apples and oranges here.
Architects using technical partitioning organize the components of the system by technical capabilities: presentation, business rules, persistence, and so on.
Domain partitioning, inspired by the Eric Evan book Domain-Driven Design, which is a modeling technique for decomposing complex software systems. In DDD, the architect identifies domains or workflows independent and decoupled from each other.
The domain partitioning (DDD) may use a persistence library and have a separate layer for business rules, but the top-level partitioning revolves around domains. Each component in the domain partitioning may have subcomponents, including layers, but the top-level partitioning focuses on domains, which better reflects the kinds of changes that most often occur on projects.
So you can implement layers on each component of DDD (your friend is doing the opposite, which is interesting and we might try that out as well).
However, please note that ("Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach", Page 135)
The layered architecture is a technically partitioned architecture (as
opposed to a domain-partitioned architecture). Groups of components,
rather than being grouped by domain (such as customer), are grouped by
their technical role in the architecture (such as presentation or
business). As a result, any particular business domain is spread
throughout all of the layers of the architecture. For example, the
domain of “customer” is contained in the presentation layer, business
layer, rules layer, services layer, and database layer, making it
difficult to apply changes to that domain. As a result, a
domain-driven design approach does not work as well with the layered
architecture style.
Everything in architecture is a trade-off, which is why the famous answer to every architecture question in the universe is “it depends.” Being said that, the disadvantage with your friend's approach is, it has higher coupling at the data level. Moreover, it will creates difficulties in untangling the data relationships if the architects later want to migrate this architecture to a distributed system (ex. microservices).
N Tier or in this case 3-tier architecture is working great with unit tests .
All you have to do is IoC (inversion of control) using dependency injection and repository pattern .
The business layer can validate , and prepare the returned data for the presentation \ web api layer by returning the exact data which is required .
You can then use mock in you unit tests all the way through the layers.
All your business logic and needs can be on bl layer . And Dal layer will contain repositories injected from higher level.
What's the difference between UML-Modeling and UML-Design? Or is it the same concept?
Thank you.
It's the same thing. Both refer to planning out your app (and documenting it) using UML.
Not really, even when both are part of the Structural Model (aim to model the static structure of the scenario), they use different objects.
The Domain Model instances are real-world objects. It is concerned with the problem domain and attempts to create a useful working model of the domain in which you are creating a solution for.
On the other hand, Design Model instances are software objects, which may be technology frameworks, databases, user interfaces, etc. you are using to get working software. You can say that Design Model is inspired by the Domain Model.
After reading Eric Evans' Domain driven Design I have a few questions. I searched but no where i could able to find satisfying answers. Please let me know if anyone of you have clear understanding below questions.
My concerns are
Repository is for getting already existing aggregates from DB,Web service .
If yes, Can Repository also have transaction calls on this entity (i.e Transfer amount,send account details ...etc)
Can Entity have Methods which have business logic in which it calls infrastructure Layer services for sending emails .. logs etc (Entity methods calling IS services direclty).
Repository implementation and Factory classes will reside in Infrastrucure Layer. is that correct statement ?
Can UI layer (controller) call Repositry methods directly ? or should we call these from Application layer ?
There are still lot many confusion in my mind ... please guide me ...
Books i am using Eric Evan's domain driven desing ......
.NET Domain-Driven Design with C#
There is a lot of debate about whether Repositories should be read-only or allow transactions. DDD doesn't dictate any of these views. You can do both. Proponents of read-only Repositories prefer Unit of Work for all CUD operations.
Most people (self included) consider it good practice that Entities are Persistent-Ignorant. Extending that principle a bit would indicate that they should be self-contained and free of all infrastructure layer services - even in abstract form. So I would say that calls to infrastructure services belong in Service classes that operate on Entities.
It sounds correct that Repository implementations and Factories (if any) should reside in the infrastructure layer. Their interfaces, however, must reside in the Domain Layer so that the domain services can interact with them without having dependencies on the infrastructure layer.
DDD doesn't really dictate whether you can skip layers or not. Late in the book, Evans talks a bit about layering and calls it Relaxed Layering when you allow this, so I guess he just sees it as one option among several. Personally I'd prefer to prevent layer skipping, because it makes it easier to inject some behavior at a future time if calls already go through the correct layers.
Personally, in my latest DDD-project, I use a Unit Of Work that holds an NHibernate session. The UoW is ctor injected in the repositories, giving them the single responsible of Add, Remove and Find.
Evans has stated that one piece of the puzzle that's missing in the DDD book is «Domain Events». Using something like Udi Dahan's DomainEvents will give you a totally decoupled architecture (the domain object simply raises an event). Personally, I use a modified version of Domain Events and StructureMap for the wiring. It works great for my needs.
I recommend, based on other recommendations, that the Repository interfaces be a part of the model, and their implementations be a part of the infrastructure.
Yes! I've personally worked on three DDD web projects where services and repositories were injected to the presenters/controllers (ASP.NET/ASP.NET MVC) and it made a lot of sense in our context.
The repository should only be for locating and saving entities, there should not be any business logic in that layer. For example:
repository.TransferAmount(amount, toAccount); // this is bad
Entities can do things like send emails as long as they depend on abstractions defined in your domain. The implementation should be in your infrastructure layer.
Yes, you put your repository implementation in your infrastructure layer.
Can UI layer (controller) call Repositry methods directly ? or should we call these from Application layer ?
Yes, I try to follow this pattern for the most part:
[UnitOfWork]
public ActionResult MyControllerAction(int id)
{
var entity = repository.FindById(id);
entity.DoSomeBusinessLogic();
repository.Update(entity);
}