Learning Domain-Driven Design

Part I. Strategic Design

There is no sense in talking about the solution before we agree on the problem, and no sense talking about the implementation steps before we agree on the solution.

Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag¹

The domain-driven design (DDD) methodology can be divided into two main parts: strategic design and tactical design. The strategic aspect of DDD deals with answering the questions of “what?” and “why?”—what software we are building and why we are building it. The tactical part is all about the “how”—how each component is implemented.

We will begin our journey by exploring domain-driven design patterns and principles of strategic design:

• In Chapter 1, you will learn to analyze a company’s business strategy: what value it provides to its consumers and how it competes with other companies in the industry. We will identify finer-grained business building blocks, evaluate their strategic value, and analyze how they affect different software design decisions.

• Chapter 2 introduces domain-driven design’s essential practice for gaining an understanding of the business domain: the ubiquitous language. You will learn how to cultivate a ubiquitous language and use it to foster a shared understanding among all project-related stakeholders.

• Chapter 3 discusses another domain-driven design core tool: the bounded context pattern. You will learn why this tool is essential for cultivating a ubiquitous language and how to use it to transform discovered knowledge into a model of ...