Skip to main content

Domain Driven Design–Get rid of your anemic domain model

Although most developers have heard about Domain Driven Design, most applications I encounter today are the traditional ‘layered cake’ with an anemic domain model.

I have to admit that even a lot of applications I’ve helped building the last years are still using this approach. Why? 2 reasons;

  • Lack of DDD knowledge in the teams. Most developers ‘know’ the tactical DDD patterns but are not aware of the strategic DDD patterns. What makes it even worse is that even the tactical patterns like the repository pattern are wrongly applied. Getting a team up to speed with DDD takes time, time that we unfortunately not always have in ‘fixed price, fixed time, fixed scope’ projects. Another reason to go for the ‘product not project’ approach.
  • Lack of access to Domain experts.  Good domain modelling can only work if the necessary expertise is around to help you find the correct ubiquitous language, identify bounded contexts and create a shared understanding of the business. Too much organizations are still siloed where a developer can talk to a functional analyst, a functional analyst can talk to a business analyst, a business analyst can talk to the business(and in fact not even the real user but someone who was assigned as a representative). It’s one of the reasons I like BDD and ‘the 3 amigos’ as it helps to close the gap.

Enough excuses… How does a well designed DDD project looks like? There are not a lot of good examples out there.

One example I can recommend that can help you get started is this one: https://github.com/asc-lab/better-code-with-ddd. It created the same application once using the traditional layered approach and once using DDD.  Also take a look at the article; https://altkomsoftware.pl/en/blog/create-better-code-using-domain-driven-design/.

Popular posts from this blog

Azure DevOps/ GitHub emoji

I’m really bad at remembering emoji’s. So here is cheat sheet with all emoji’s that can be used in tools that support the github emoji markdown markup: All credits go to rcaviers who created this list.

Kubernetes–Limit your environmental impact

Reducing the carbon footprint and CO2 emission of our (cloud) workloads, is a responsibility of all of us. If you are running a Kubernetes cluster, have a look at Kube-Green . kube-green is a simple Kubernetes operator that automatically shuts down (some of) your pods when you don't need them. A single pod produces about 11 Kg CO2eq per year( here the calculation). Reason enough to give it a try! Installing kube-green in your cluster The easiest way to install the operator in your cluster is through kubectl. We first need to install a cert-manager: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.14.5/cert-manager.yaml Remark: Wait a minute before you continue as it can take some time before the cert-manager is up & running inside your cluster. Now we can install the kube-green operator: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kube-green/kube-green/releases/latest/download/kube-green.yaml Now in the namespace where we want t...

DevToys–A swiss army knife for developers

As a developer there are a lot of small tasks you need to do as part of your coding, debugging and testing activities.  DevToys is an offline windows app that tries to help you with these tasks. Instead of using different websites you get a fully offline experience offering help for a large list of tasks. Many tools are available. Here is the current list: Converters JSON <> YAML Timestamp Number Base Cron Parser Encoders / Decoders HTML URL Base64 Text & Image GZip JWT Decoder Formatters JSON SQL XML Generators Hash (MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA512) UUID 1 and 4 Lorem Ipsum Checksum Text Escape / Unescape Inspector & Case Converter Regex Tester Text Comparer XML Validator Markdown Preview Graphic Col...