ddd-guide

name

ddd-guide

description

Use when finding and naming domain boundaries and modelling inside them — establishing a ubiquitous language, drawing bounded contexts and a context map, protecting a model with an anti-corruption layer, and applying the tactical building blocks (entity, value object, aggregate + root, domain event, repository, domain/application service). Triggers on ubiquitous language, bounded context, context map, anti-corruption layer, aggregate / aggregate root, entity vs value object, domain event, repository, strategic vs tactical design, anemic domain model — even when the user doesn't say 'DDD'.

Domain-Driven Design

Find the boundaries in a domain, name everything inside them rigorously, and model each boundary with building blocks that keep business invariants honest. Strategic design draws the map; tactical design fills it in.

Essentials

• Build one ubiquitous language per context - bind agreed terms into both the model and the code, see references/strategic-design.md
• Draw bounded contexts before classes - each context is a boundary of model consistency where words mean exactly one thing, see references/strategic-design.md
• Map contexts and shield with an anti-corruption layer - translate foreign models both directions into your own terms, see references/strategic-design.md
• Distinguish entity from value object - identity-over-time versus defined-by-attributes-and-immutable, see references/tactical-building-blocks.md
• Keep aggregates small with one root - protect true invariants in a transaction, reference other aggregates by id, see references/tactical-building-blocks.md
• Hand whole aggregates through a repository - persistence-ignorant, collection-like access to roots only, see references/tactical-building-blocks.md

Gotchas

• A bounded context is not a microservice or a subdomain: it is a solution-space model boundary; a subdomain is a problem-space area; a service is a deployment unit. They often align but are not the same thing.
• Ubiquitous language is not "a glossary". It only counts when the agreed terms live in the model AND the code; a wiki nobody compiles against is not a ubiquitous language.
• Do not force one canonical "Customer" across the whole system for DRY-ness. DDD deliberately tolerates the same word modelled differently per context; unifying it reintroduces the coupling bounded contexts exist to remove.
• A thin ORM/DAO wrapper is not a repository, and an upstream-API client is not an anti-corruption layer: a repository hands out whole aggregate roots and is persistence-ignorant; an ACL translates foreign concepts both directions, not just forwards calls.
• One giant aggregate "for navigation convenience" loses to performance, scalability, and transaction contention. Prefer small aggregates and accept eventual consistency between them.
• Entities that are getters/setters with all logic pushed into services is the anemic-domain-model anti-pattern, not DDD. Behaviour belongs with the data it guards.
• Code-level coupling metrics belong to connascence-guide, class/inheritance mechanics to oop-guide, and undo/serialization machinery to data-model-guide — DDD names the domain boundaries, not those.

Example

Bounded context: Ordering
  Ubiquitous language: Customer, Order, OrderLine, place, fulfil
  Aggregate Order (root)
    invariant: total == sum(orderLines.subtotal)   // enforced in one transaction
    orderLines: OrderLine[]                          // value objects, no identity
    references Shipment by id, never by object       // cross-aggregate = eventual consistency
  emits OrderPlaced (domain event, carries identifiers)
  Repository: orders.save(order) / orders.byId(id)   // whole aggregate, persistence-ignorant

Bounded context: Shipping
  "Customer" here means Recipient: name + address + phone
  anti-corruption layer translates OrderPlaced -> Recipient   // does not import the Ordering model

Progressive Disclosure

• Read references/strategic-design.md - Load when finding boundaries: ubiquitous language, bounded contexts, context maps, context-mapping patterns, anti-corruption layer, subdomains
• Read references/tactical-building-blocks.md - Load when modelling inside a context: entity, value object, aggregate + root, domain event, repository, domain/application service, anemic-model anti-pattern