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Can anybody have good answer when should be database driven development be used and when should domain driven development be used. These both development approach have their importance in their respected areas. But I am not so clear which approach is appropriate in what type of situation. Any recommendation?
First for some background, Martin Fowler actually described three different "patterns" in his book Patterns of Enterprise Arcitecture. Transaction Script, Active Record and Domain Model. DDD uses the domain model pattern for the overall architecture and describes a lot of practices and patterns to implement and design this model.
Transaction script is an architecture where you don't have any layering. The same piece of code reads/writes the database, processes the data and handles the user interface.
Active Record is one step up from that. You split off your UI, your business logic and data layer still live together in active record objects that are modeled after the database.
A domain model decouples the business logic that lives in your model from your data-layer. The model knows nothing about the database.
And now we come to the interesting part:
The cost of this added separation is of course extra work. The benefits are better maintainability and flexibility.
Transaction script is good when you have few or no business rules, you just want to do data-entry and have no verification steps or all the verification is implemented in the database.
Active record adds some flexibility to that. Because you decouple your UI you can for example reuse the layer beneath it between applications, you can easilly add some business rules and verification logic to the business objects. But because these are still tightly coupled to the database changes in the datamodel can be very expensive.
You use a domain model when you want to decouple your business logic from the database. This enables you to handle changing requirements easier. Domain Driven Design is a method to optimally use this added flexibility to implement complex solutions without being tied to a database implementation.
Lots of tooling makes data-driven solutions easier. In the microsoft space it is very easy to visually design websites where all the code lives right behind the web-page. This is a typical transaction script solution and this is great to easilly create simple applications. Ruby on rails has tools that make working with active record objects easier. This might be a reason to go data-driven when you need to develop simpler solutions. For applications where behaviour is more important than data and it's hard to define all the behaviour up front DDD is the way to go.
I've asked a similar question: Where do I start designing when using O/R mapping? Objects or database tables?
From the answers I got I would say: Unless you have concrete reason to use database driven development, use domain driven development.
Think of it this way.
The problem domain exists forever. Your class definitions will reflect the eternal features of the domain.
The relational database is today's preferred persistence mechanism. At some point, we'll move past this to something "newer", "better", "different". The database design is merely one implementation; it reflects a solution architecture more than the problem domain.
Consequently, it's domain first. Classes reflect the problem domain and the universal truths. Relational database and ORM come second and third. Finally, fill in other stuff around the model.
As a side-note to mendelt's post, I feel there is a fourth pattern: one that is layered, separates busines logic from persistence and storage, yet uses no "entities", or "busines objects". A half way point, if you will, between Transaction/Action script and DDD.
In a good deal of the systems I've worked on, the persistence layer (repositories) used SqlClient directly and returned datasets to a calling service. The services performed decisions and compiled views which were sent to the user, through the controller. You migth consider the service layer a business model, and you'd be right, but it wasn't a "domain" model in the DDD sense. Still, ALL business logic occured in that one layer, period. Each layer had it's job. The views displayed data, the controllers determined views, the persistence layer handled storage, and the services worked in-between controllers and persistence.
The point is this: DDD is an approach to defining a business through Ul, tests, and code. It is not about entities, value objects and aggregates. Those things are just by-products of the OOP purists approach to DDD.
Just more thoughts for your consideration.
For complex business models, I prefer a mix of ActiveRecord and DDD. The domain objects know how to save themselves and data actions are done against a repository (nHibernate can act as a generic repository, if you look at a repository as something that exposes data to the model as a collection). The business logic resides in the domain entities, and even some encapsulation of value types can be accomplished, although only when there is a business need. Some implementations of DDD favor removing all public setters and only modifying entities through methods. I'm not a fan of that implementation unless there is a very good business need.
It seems to me that this implementation gives you the ease of use of ActiveRecord and the business logic encapsulation of DDD.
Domain Driven Development is surely the way to go. it makes more sense and adds flexibility.
Related
So I started my 2nd developer job after spending 10 years at my first company and not really feeling I earned the title of a senior developer. It was java development but we were working with an anemic domain model and the application in my opinion was a huge difficult-to-test mess. Unfortunately the code base that I'm working with now is exactly the same and I recently had another interview where the interviewer described their Hibernate model as being light weight and just containing setters getters as well. So it appears this is quite common across the industry.
There's plenty of articles describing the anemic domain model as an anti-pattern and also some articles where it is described as perfectly fine for simple systems. But I haven't seen any examples of making the best out of working with a large enterprise system with an ADM.
Has anyone had experience with this? Are there any best practices for creating a loosely coupled system that contains unit tests that are readable and actually valuable? I really want to take pride in my work but am losing hope.
Edit:
To the developers that advocate business logic being contained in services:
how do you limit the dependencies on other services within each service? i.e. OrderCancelService needs CustomerAccountService and PaymentService and RefundCalculatorService and RewardsAdjustmentService, etc This tends to lead to several mock objects in tests making tests way too tied into implementation
how do you limit the number of parameters in each service's method? Since everything needs to be passed around and objects don't operate on their own data, this seems to lead to very large and confusing method signatures
Do you apply tell, don't ask principle to service objects? I see a lot of services that return values which are then used by the calling service to make decisions in execution flow.
You may consider your persistence model, which you now think about as the anemic domain model, as what it is - the persistence model for your domain model state.
If you do that, you probably can create a real domain model, which will have its state stored inside the persistence model objects (State pattern). Then, you can have your logic inside this new domain model. Reading your comment above, I would say you can convert your "manager/service" classes to state machines, you can call them aggregates if they match with transaction boundaries, and have their state in POJOs persisted by Hibernate as it is done now.
When implementing CQRS with Domain Driven Design, we separate our command interface from our query interface.
My understanding is that at the domain level this reduces complexity significantly (especially when using event sourcing) in the domain model sense your read model will be different from your write model. So that looks like a separate domain service for your read and write bounded context.
At the application level, do we need a separate application service for the read and write separations of our domain?
I've been playing devil's advocate on the matter. My thoughts are it could be overkill, requiring clients to know the difference. But then I think about how a consuming webservice might use it. Generally, it will issue get requests for reading and post for writing, which means it already knows.
I see the benefits being cleaner application services.
The real value is having a properly separated read and domain model. They do fundamentally different things. And often have very different shapes. It's entirely possible for the read model to contain an amalgam of data from differing domain objects for example.
When you think about how they are used and the way the function within an application you can start to appreciate the need for the separation. The classic example here is to consider the number of writes compared to the reads in a typical application. The reads massively outnumber the writes. By maintaining a difference you can optimise each side for it's respective role.
Another aspect to bear in mind is that a 'post' will constitute a command not a viewmodel which may contain a read model. If using a CQRS approach you need to adapt the way you do queries and posts. In fact you can achieve a much more descriptive language rather than simply reflecting a view model back and forth to a server.
If your interested I have a blog post which outlines the high level overview of a typical CQRS architecture. You can find it here: A step by step overview of a typical CQRS application. Hope you find it useful.
Final point. We are in the process of adding new functionality and have found the separation to be very helpful. Changes to one side don't impact the other in the same way as they might.
Probably similar questions have been asked many times but I think that every response helps to make the understanding of DDD better and better. I would like to describe how I perceive certain aspects of DDD. I have some basic uncertainties around it and would appreciate if someone could give a solid and practical anwser. Please note, these questions assume a 'classic' approach to DDD. This means using ORM's etc. Approaches like CQRS and event sourcing are not considered here.
Aggregates and entities are the primary objects that implement domain logic. They have state and identity. In this context, I perceive domain logic as the set of all commands that mutate that state. Does that make sense? Why is domain logic related exclusively to state? Is it legal to model domain objects that have no identitiy or no state? Why can't a domain object be implemented as a transaction script? Example: Consider an object that recommends you a partner for a dating site. That object has no real state, but it does quite a lot of domain logic? Putting that into the service layer implies that the domain model cannot cover all logic.
Access to other domain objects. Can aggregates have access to a repository? Example: When a (stateful) domain object needs to have access to all 'users' of the system to perform its work, it would need access them via the repository. As a consequence, an ORM would need to inject the repository when loading the object (which might be technically more challenging). If objects can't have access to repositories, where would you put the domain logic for this example? In the service layer? Isn't the service layer supposed to have no logic?
Aggregates and entities should not talk to the outside world, they are only concerned about their bounded context. We should not inject external dependencies (like IPaymentGateway or IEmailService) into a domain object, this would cause the domain to handle exceptions that come from outside. Solution: an event based approach. How do you send events then? You still need to inject the correct 'listeners' every time you instantiate a domain object. ORM's are about restoring 'data' but are not primarly intended to inject dependencies. Do we need an DI-ORM mix?
Domain objects and DTO's. When you query an aggregate root for its state does it return a projection of its state (DTO) or the domain objects themselves? In most models that I see, clients have full access to the domain data model, introducing a deep coupling to the actual structure of the domain. I perceive the 'object graph' behind an aggregate to be its own buisness. That's encapsulation, right? So for me an aggregate root should return only DTO's. DTO's are often defined in the service layer but my approach is to model it in the domain itself. The service layer might still add another level of abstraction, but that's a different choice. Is that a good advice?
Repositories handle all CRUD operations at the aggregate root level. What about other queries? Queries return DTO's and not domain objects. For that to work, the repsitory must be aware of the data structure of the domain which introduces a coupling. My advice is similar to before: Use events to populate views. Thus, the internal structure is not made public, only the events carry the necessary data to build up the view.
Unit of work. A controller at the system boundary will instantiate commands and pass them to a service layer which in turn loads the appropriate aggregates and forwards the commands. The controller might use multiple commands and pass them to multiple services. This is all controlled by the unit of work pattern. This means, repositories, entities, services - all participate in the same transaction. Do you agree?
Buisness logic is not domain logic. From a buisness perspective the realization of a use case might involve many steps: Registering a customer, sending an email, create a storage account, etc. This overall process can impossibly fit in a domain aggregate root. The domain object would need to have access to all kind of infrastructure. Solution: Workflows or sagas (or transaction script). Is that a good advice?
Thank you
The first best practice I can suggest is to read the Evans' book. Twice.
Too many "DDD projects" fail because developers pretend that DDD is simply OOP done right.
Then, you should really understand that DDD is for applications that have to handle very complex business rules correctly. In a nutshell: if you don't need to pay a domain expert to understand the business, you don't need DDD. The core concept of DDD, indeed, is the ubiquitous language that both the coders, the experts and the users share to understand each other.
Furthermore, you should read and understand what aggregates are (consistency boundaries) by reading Effective Aggregate Design by Vernon.
Finally, you might find useful the modeling patterns documented here.
Despite my comment above, I took a stab at your points. (note: I'm not Eric Evans or Jimmy Nilsson so take my "advice" with a grain of salt).
Your example "Consider an object that recommends you a partner for a dating site.", belongs in a Domain service (not an infrastructure service). See this article here - http://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2008/08/21/services-in-domain-driven-design/
Aggregates do not access repositories directly, but they can create a unit of work which combines operations from multiple domain objects into one.
Not sure on this one. This should really be a question by itself.
That's debatable, in theory, the domain entities would not be directly available outside the aggregate root, but that is not always practical. I consider this decision on a case-by-case basis.
I not sure what you mean exactly by "queries". If modeling all possible "reading" scenarios in your domain does not seem practical or provide sufficient performance, it suggests a CQRS solution is probably best.
Yes, I agree. UOW is a tool in your toolbox that you can use in various layers.
This statement is fundamentally wrong "Business logic is not domain logic". The domain IS the representation business logic, thus one reason for using ubiquitous language.
I'm trying to figure out the best way to build an easily maintainable and testable architecture. Having gone through several projects, I've seen some pretty bad architectures and I want to avoid making future mistakes on my own projects.
Let's say I'm building a fairly complex three layer application and I want to use DDD. My question is, where should I place my business logic? Some people say it should be placed in services (service layer) and that does make sense. Having a number of services which adhere to Single Responsibility Principle makes sense.
However, some people said that this is an anti pattern and that business logic shouldn't be implemented in the service layer. Why is this?
Let's say we have IAuthenticationService which has a method with bool UsernameAvailable(string username) signature. The method would implement all required logic to check whether the username is available or not.
What is the problem here according to the "this is an antipattern" crowd?
If you put all your business logic in an (implicitly stateless) service layer you're writing procedural code. By decoupling behavior from data, you're giving up on writing object-oriented code.
That's not always bad: it's simple, and if you have simple business logic there's no reason to invest in a full-fledged object-oriented domain model.
The more complex the business logic (and the larger the domain), the faster procedural code turns into spaghetti code: procedures start calling each other with different pre- and post-conditions (in incompatible order) and they begin to require ever-growing state objects.
Martin Fowler's article on Anemic Domain Models is probably the best starting point for understanding why (and under what conditions) people object to putting business logic in a service layer.
A service layer in itself is not an anti-pattern, it is a very reasonable place to put certain elements of your business logic. However, you do need to apply discretion to the design of the service layer, ensuring that you aren't stealing business logic from your domain model and the objects that comprise it.
By doing that you can end up with a true anti-pattern, an anaemic domain model.
This is discussed in-depth by Martin Fowler here.
Your example of an IAuthenticationService isn't perhaps the best for discussing the problem - much of the logic around authentication can be seen as living in a service and not really associated with domain objects. A better example might be if you had some sort of IUserValidationService to validate a user, or even worse a service that does something like process orders - the validation service is stripping logic out of the user object and the order processing service is taking logic away from your order objects, and possibly also from objects representing customers, delivery notices etc...
You have to have 4 layers with DDD: Presentation, Application, Domain, and Infrastructure.
The Presentation layer presents information to the user, interprets user commands.
All dependent on use-cases logic (application entities, application workflow components, e.g. DTOs, Application services) goes to the Application layer (Application logic). This layer doesn’t contain any business logic, does not hold the state of business objects, can keep the state of an application task’s progress.
All invariant to use-cases logic (business entities, business workflow components, e.g. Domain model, Domain services) goes to the Domain layer (Domain logic). This layer is responsible for concepts of the business domain and business rules.
The Infrastructure layer may have IoC, Cache, Repositories, ORM, Cryptography, Logging, Search engine, etc.
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);
}