Script free MSDN

Obviously anyone who uses MSDN online knows it been updated and now looks like a really poor MySpace page!

But I did find one feature I really like today - 'ScriptFree' mode, this is a god send in a company environment pages now load in near light-speed, check out the 'Switch View' options on the righthand side of this page.

Hopefully they'll bring out a '1992 Times New Roman' version soon ;)


Awkward Coder

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Schrödinger's Service

Where I currently work the team has a set of SOA services that are used by alot of different app teams in the bank. In the UAT environment we occasionally get support issues where people can't access the services - they're receiving 404 errors!

When ever we check the services locally or remotely they're working fine and have been all the time - it appears the problem is in the infrastructure between the app team and the service endpoints. This doesn't really help our perception to rest of the bank and it's a bitch to resolve!

So we've come up with a name for the services 'Schrödinger's Services' - by the act of observing the services we've confirmed they're operating correctly and they then work for the app team as well. This happens every time we get this support query.

Check out wiki for the origin of the name.


Awkward Coder

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Can I make a value object from an entity?

I've built a rich domain model for a private app I'm working on, it feels right, it got the correct mix of business functionality and models the domain problem very well, it even has flexibility for the future. I consciously had to keep focusing the domain expert and myself on the current iteration and not the future!

So I reached a point where I want to expose a 'view' depending on the 'context' of usage.

Simply put I want to expose data from some of the entitles as a 'catalog'. This catalog is immutable - the users of the catalog can't change or modify the contents they can only 'view' what is available. Items in the catalog don't contain an entity identifier and they only contain a subset of an entities data. This catalog item is starting to sound like a value object to me...

So the question is; Can I create a value object from an entity?

I think it's perfectly acceptable to do this - remember a value object should be immutable, the sub-text of the question for me is; is it acceptable to expose value objects via a service? I want a service that allows searching & returning of catalog items (with pagination etc). I also think this perfectly acceptable approach.

I suppose what I've defined here is a 'context' boundary for the core domain model - 'bounded context'.



Awkward Coder

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