A business object is an entity within a multi-tiered

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

application that works in conjunction with the

data access Data access is a generic term referring to a process which has both an IT-specific meaning and other connotations involving access rights in a broader legal and/or political sense. In the former it typically refers to software and activities relat ...

and

business logic In computer software, business logic or domain logic is the part of the program that encodes the real-world business rules that determine how data can be created, stored, and changed. It is contrasted with the remainder of the software that might ...

layers to transport data. Business objects separate

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

from

behaviour Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions of Individual, individuals, organisms, systems or Artificial intelligence, artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or or ...

because they are communicated across the tiers in a multi-tiered system, while the real work of the application is done in the business tier and does not move across the tiers.

Function

Whereas a program may implement classes, which typically end in objects managing or executing behaviours, a business object usually does nothing itself but holds a set of

instance variable In class-based, object-oriented programming, an instance variable is a variable defined in a class (i.e., a member variable), for which each instantiated object of the class has a separate copy, or instance. An instance variable has similari ...

s or

properties Property is the ownership of land, resources, improvements or other tangible objects, or intellectual property. Property may also refer to: Philosophy and science * Property (philosophy), in philosophy and logic, an abstraction characterizing an ...

, also known as attributes, and associations with other business objects, weaving a map of objects representing the business relationships. A

domain model In software engineering, a domain model is a conceptual model of the domain (software engineering), domain that incorporates both behavior and data.Fowler, Martin. "P of EAA - Domain Model"/ref> In ontology engineering, a domain model is a Knowl ...

where business objects do not have behaviour is called an anemic domain model.

Examples

For example, a "Manager" would be a business object where its attributes can be "Name", "Second name", "Age", "Area", "Country" and it could hold a 1-n association with its employees (a collection of "Employee" instances). Another example would be a concept like "Process" having "Identifier", "Name", "Start date", "End date" and "Kind" attributes and holding an association with the "Employee" (the responsible) that started it.

References

*Rockford Lhotka, Visual Basic 6.0 Business Objects, *Rockford Lhotka, Expert C# Business Objects, *Rockford Lhotka, Expert One-on-One Visual Basic .NET Business Objects,

External links

A definition of domain model
by Martin Fowler
Anemic Domain Model
by Martin Fowler Programming constructs {{compu-stub

Function

Examples

See also

References

External links