Is It Incorrect to Make Domain Objects Aware of The Data Access Layer?
- by Noah Goodrich
I am currently working on rewriting an application to use Data Mappers that completely abstract the database from the Domain layer. However, I am now wondering which is the better approach to handling relationships between Domain objects:
Call the necessary find() method from the related data mapper directly within the domain object
Write the relationship logic into the native data mapper (which is what the examples tend to do in PoEAA) and then call the native data mapper function within the domain object.
Either it seems to me that in order to preserve the 'Fat Model, Skinny Controller' mantra, the domain objects have to be aware of the data mappers (whether it be their own or that they have access to the other mappers in the system). Additionally it seems that Option 2 unnecessarily complicates the data access layer as it creates table access logic across multiple data mappers instead of confining it to a single data mapper.
So, is it incorrect to make the domain objects aware of the related data mappers and to call data mapper functions directly from the domain objects?
Update: These are the only two solutions that I can envision to handle the issue of relations between domain objects. Any example showing a better method would be welcome.
