Hello,

I need help with finding my aggregate root and boundary.

I have 3 Entities: Plan, PlannedRole and PlannedTraining. Each Plan can include many PlannedRoles and PlannedTrainings.

Solution 1: At first I thought Plan is the aggregate root because PlannedRole and PlannedTraining do not make sense out of the context of a Plan. They are always within a plan. Also, we have a business rule that says each Plan can have a maximum of 3 PlannedRoles and 5 PlannedTrainings. So I thought by nominating the Plan as the aggregate root, I can enforce this invariant.

However, we have a Search page where the user searches for Plans. The results shows a few properties of the Plan itself (and none of its PlannedRoles or PlannedTrainings). I thought if I have to load the entire aggregate, it would have a lot of overhead. There are nearly 3000 plans and each may have a few children. Loading all these objects together and then ignoring PlannedRoles and PlannedTrainings in the search page doesn't make sense to me.

Solution 2: I just realized the user wants 2 more search pages where they can search for Planned Roles or Planned Trainings. That made me realize they are trying to access these objects independently and "out of" the context of Plan. So I thought I was wrong about my initial design and that is how I came up with this solution. So, I thought to have 3 aggregates here, 1 for each Entity.

This approach enables me to search for each Entity independently and also resolves the performance issue in solution 1. However, using this approach I cannot enforce the invariant I mentioned earlier.

There is also another invariant that states a Plan can be changed only if it is of a certain status. So, I shouldn't be able to add any PlannedRoles or PlannedTrainings to a Plan that is not in that status. Again, I can't enforce this invariant with the second approach.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Mosh