[domain-driven-design] What is Domain Driven Design?

I do not want to repeat others' answers, so, in short I explain some common misunderstanding

  • Practical resource: PATTERNS, PRINCIPLES, AND PRACTICES OF DOMAIN-DRIVEN DESIGN by Scott Millett
  • It is a methodology for complicated business systems. It takes all the technical matters out when communicating with business experts
  • It provides an extensive understanding of (simplified and distilled model of) business across the whole dev team.
  • it keeps business model in sync with code model by using ubiquitous language (the language understood by the whole dev team, business experts, business analysts, ...), which is used for communication within the dev team or dev with other teams
  • It has nothing to do with Project Management. Although it can be perfectly used in project management methods like Agile.
  • You should avoid using it all across your project

    DDD stresses the need to focus the most effort on the core subdomain. The core subdomain is the area of your product that will be the difference between it being a success and it being a failure. It’s the product’s unique selling point, the reason it is being built rather than bought.

    Basically, it is because it takes too much time and effort. So, it is suggested to break down the whole domain into subdomain and just apply it in those with high business value. (ex not in generic subdomain like email, ...)

  • It is not object oriented programming. It is mostly problem solving approach and (sometimes) you do not need to use OO patterns (such as Gang of Four) in your domain models. Simply because it can not be understood by Business Experts (they do not know much about Factory, Decorator, ...). There are even some patterns in DDD (such as The Transaction Script, Table Module) which are not 100% in line with OO concepts.