Skip to main content

Naked Objects

Image
By
I recently received and re-read Dan Haywood's excellent "Domain-Driven Design Using Naked Objects" (I'd read a review copy some months ago). It's definitely worth the effort and I'm hoping to get some of the exercises done too as this means I can get up to speed with where the Naked Objects framework currently is these days.One of the first pieces of prototyping we did with xProcess (back in 2003) was to create a domain model (using TogetherSoft's "Together") and then connect it to Naked Objects so we could dynamically interact with those early models of Project, Task and Person. Naked Object effectively animates a domain model so you have an instant user interface to manipulate the domain objects. I believe the approach helped us then and I would certainly recommend projects consider doing the same - particularly in early stages of a project - as getting good domain models early pays off many times over at the end of the day.

Comments

Richard Pawson said…
Andy - glad to hear you're still interested in Naked Objects. It is many years since we met. Are you aware that you are responsible for a feature of Naked Objects? In the very early days Naked Objects only supported two kinds of actions: zero parameter (which were rendered on the pop-up object menu) and one-parameter, which were invoked by dropping one object on another. Our line then was that if you needed more than one parameter, then you were effectively looking at another object (albeit transient-only). It was you who suggested that public methods with mutiple parameters should also be rendered as menu actions, but generate a dialog reflectively. That's now been part of Naked Objects for so many years that it's very hard to remember how we managed without. So, belatedly: Thank You.
2:13 pm
Andy Carmichael said…
Hi Richard,
I remember the conversation well and I'm delighted that it was so fruitful - was it at BeJUG in Antwerp?. I am still interested in Naked Object because I am sure that frameworks like this are such a natural support for development teams. Surely that they will become ubiquitous. I think it's obvious that a good domain model contains more than enough information to generate full applications - albeit with standard user access and persistence mechanisms. It's probable that user interfaces will get specialised to gain competitive advantage, but in the early stages of projects/products there really is no justification for this extra expense.
Keep pounding the message. It'll get through eventually!
3:41 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Does your Definition of Done allow known defects?

By
Is it just me or do you also find it odd that some teams have clauses like this in their definition of done (DoD)?
... the Story will contain defects of level 3 severity or less only ... Of course they don't mean you have to put minor bugs in your code - that really would be mad - but it does mean you can sign the Story off as "Done"if the bugs you discover in it are only minor (like spelling mistakes, graphical misalignment, faults with easy workarounds, etc.). I saw DoDs like this some time ago and was seriously puzzled by the madness of it. I was reminded of it again at a meet-up discussion recently - it's clearly a practice that's not uncommon.

Let's look at the consequences of this policy. 

Potentially for every User Story that is signed off as "Done" there could be several additional Defect Stories (of low priority) that will be created. It's possible that finishing a Story (with no additional user requirements) will result in an increase in…
Post a Comment
Read more

"Plan of Intent" and "Plan of Record"

By
Ron Lichty is well known in the Software Engineering community on the West Coast as a practitioner, as a seasoned project manager of many successful ventures and in a number of SIGs and conferences in which he is active. In spite of knowing Ron by correspondence over a long period of time it was only at JavaOne this year that we finally got together and I'm very glad we did.

Ron wrote to me after our meeting:

I told a number of people later at JavaOne, and even later that evening at the Software Engineering Management SIG, about xProcess. It really looks good. A question came up: It's a common technique in large organizations to keep a "Plan of Intent" and a "Plan of Record" - to have two project plans, one for the business partners and boss, one you actually execute to. Any support for that in xProcess?

Good question! Here's my reply...

There is support in xProcess for an arbitrary number of target levels through what we call (in the process definitions) P…
Post a Comment
Read more

Understanding Cost of Delay and its Use in Kanban

By
Cost of Delay (CoD) is a vital concept to understand in product development. It should be a guide to the ordering of work items, even if - as is often the case - estimating it quantitatively may be difficult or even impossible. Analysing Cost of Delay (even if done qualitatively) is important because it focuses on the business value of work items and how that value changes over time. An understanding of Cost of Delay is essential if you want to maximise the flow of value to your customers.

Don Reinertsen in his book Flow [1] has shown that, if you want to deliver the maximum business value with a given size team, you give the highest priority, not to the most valuable work items in your "pool of ideas," not even to the most urgent items (those whose business value decays at the fastest rate), nor to your smallest items. Rather you should prioritise those items with the highest value of urgency (or CoD) divided by the time taken to implement them. Reinertsen called this appro…
Post a Comment
Read more