A business object is an entity within a
multi-tiered software
Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications.
The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...
application that works in conjunction with the
data access
Data access is a generic term referring to a process which has both an IT-specific meaning and other connotations involving access rights in a broader legal and/or political sense. In the former it typically refers to software and activities relat ...
and
business logic
In computer software, business logic or domain logic is the part of the program that encodes the real-world business rules that determine how data can be created, stored, and changed. It is contrasted with the remainder of the software that might ...
layers to transport data.
Business objects separate
state
State most commonly refers to:
* State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory
**Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country
**Nation state, a ...
from
behaviour
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions of Individual, individuals, organisms, systems or Artificial intelligence, artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or or ...
because they are communicated across the tiers in a multi-tiered system, while the real work of the application is done in the business tier and does not move across the tiers.
Function
Whereas a program may implement
classes, which typically end in objects managing or executing behaviours, a business object usually does nothing itself but holds a set of
instance variable
In class-based, object-oriented programming, an instance variable is a variable defined in a class (i.e., a member variable), for which each instantiated object of the class has a separate copy, or instance. An instance variable has similari ...
s or
properties
Property is the ownership of land, resources, improvements or other tangible objects, or intellectual property.
Property may also refer to:
Philosophy and science
* Property (philosophy), in philosophy and logic, an abstraction characterizing an ...
, also known as
attributes, and
associations with other business objects, weaving a map of objects representing the business relationships.
A
domain model
In software engineering, a domain model is a conceptual model of the domain (software engineering), domain that incorporates both behavior and data.Fowler, Martin. "P of EAA - Domain Model"/ref> In ontology engineering, a domain model is a Knowl ...
where business objects do not have behaviour is called an
anemic domain model
The anemic domain model is described as a programming anti-pattern where the domain objects contain little or no business logic like validations, calculations, rules, and so forth. The business logic is thus baked into the architecture of the prog ...
.
Examples
For example, a "Manager" would be a business object where its attributes can be "Name", "Second name", "Age", "Area", "Country" and it could hold a
1-n association with its employees (a collection of "Employee" instances).
Another example would be a concept like "Process" having "Identifier", "Name", "Start date", "End date" and "Kind" attributes and holding an association with the "Employee" (the responsible) that started it.
See also
*
Active record pattern
In software engineering, the active record pattern is an architectural pattern. It is found in software that stores in-memory object data in relational databases. It was named by Martin Fowler in his 2003 book ''Patterns of Enterprise Application ...
, design pattern that stores object data in memory in relational databases, with functions to insert, update, and delete records
*
Business intelligence
Business intelligence (BI) consists of strategies, methodologies, and technologies used by enterprises for data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of BI technologies include Financial reporting, reporting, online an ...
, a field within information technology that provides decision support and business-critical information based on data
*
Data access object
In software, a data access object (DAO) is a pattern that provides an abstract interface to some type of database or other persistence mechanism. By mapping application calls to the persistence layer, the DAO provides data operations without ex ...
, design pattern that provides an interface to a type of database or other persistent mechanism, and offers data operations to application calls without exposing database details
*
Data transfer object
In the field of programming a data transfer object (DTOMSDN (2010). Data Transfer Object. Microsoft MSDN Library. Retrieved from https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms978717.aspx.Fowler, Martin (2010). Data Transfer Object. Patterns of Enterpr ...
, design pattern where an object carries aggregated data between processes to reduce the number of calls
References
*Rockford Lhotka, Visual Basic 6.0 Business Objects,
*Rockford Lhotka, Expert C# Business Objects,
*Rockford Lhotka, Expert One-on-One Visual Basic .NET Business Objects,
External links
A definition of domain model
by Martin Fowler
Anemic Domain Model
by Martin Fowler
Programming constructs
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