Domain Driven Development
Most businesses, large or small, have some requirement for custom software - application software written specifically to address the particular operational requirements of their business domain.
However, developing such software can be an expensive proposition, because it is very easy to end up spending money building a system that doesn't meet the requirements. Why?
- first, because the IT developers find it hard to understand what the business wants, and
- second, because the business find it hard to write down what they want in the first place
Naked Objects
We use Naked Objects as a means to rapidly implement your requirements (optionally following on from earlier (prototyping). With Naked Objects the core software developed represent concepts within your business domain. These develop into a Ubiquitous Language through which the business and developers communicate.
Every Naked Objects application is fully tested, using a testing framework that can be used for unit testing or full regression testing as required. The testing framework can optionally be configured to produce test transcripts, useful for training or regression.
Naked Objects can be easily integrated into service-oriented architectures by exposing domain object functionality through web services. This same functionality can also be used in the context of straight-through processing.
Naked Objects is the basis for the Irish Government's SDM programme that went live with a new Pension system in May 2006 (with other schemes every 2 months subsequently). It equally applies to small-scale systems. Naked Objects will run on Java or .Net, or as a web-based application if required.
TogetherJ UML Tool
For complex business domains it can be helpful to use modelling notations such as the Unified Modelling Language to capture the concepts in diagrammatic form. However, the overhead of maintaining such diagrams can severely impact the overall agility of the development team.
The best way to meet this need then is to use technologies such as Borland's TogetherJ UML tool (based on Eclipse) which automatically synchronizes the programming code with their diagrammatic representation. We use the ideas described in Haywood & Carmichael's book Better Software Faster to achieve this. (The Irish Government project successfully used TogetherJ with Naked Objects during the early stages as the object model was being developed).