How can I get my business objects layer to use the management layer in their methods?
- by Tom Pickles
I have a solution in VS2010 with several projects, each making up a layer within my application. I have business entities which are currently objects with no methods, and I have a management layer which references the business entities layer in it's project. I now think I have designed my application poorly and would like to move methods from helper classes (which are in another layer) into methods I'll create within the business entities themselves.
For example I have a VirtualMachine object, which uses a helper class to call a Reboot() method on it which passes the request to the management layer. The static manager class talks to an API that reboots the VM. I want to move the Reboot() method into the VirtualMachine object, but I will need to reference the management layer:
public void Reboot()
{
VMManager.Reboot(this.Name);
}
So if I add a reference to my management project in my entities project, I get the circular dependency error, which is how it should be. How can I sort this situation out? Do I need to an yet another layer between the entity layer and the management layer? Or, should I just forget it and leave it as it is.
The application works ok now, but I am concerned my design isn't particularly OOP centric and I would like to correct this.
