Object Modeling for the WEB

[Greg Dirst]

I have been mentored by folks that understand your methodologies of OOD.
Hopefully, they have understood your pratices and applied them to me.

I have no problem modeling a VB application for objects and events, however
I constantly struggle with providing a model when we are implementing an
tiered approach with ASP, COM, MTS, and RDS.

My struggle stems from the physical "middle-tier". It doesn't play a role
in the object model nor the event model. Where does it go? Am I mistaken?

One example, an OCX running in a webpage asks a middle-tier object to return
an object (from my object model). The objects returned have no database code
whatsoever, but the middle-tier object did and is running as a stateless
object. The middle-tier business object simply retrieved the recordset and
built my object following the rules defined for the object model. I have
no problem diagramming it though I cannot determine how to document it.

Do the modeling practices change for OOD when the web is a factor?

Thanks, Greg

[Dan Appleman]

"Greg Dirst" <gregdirst@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>I have been mentored by folks that understand your methodologies of OOD.
>Hopefully, they have understood your pratices and applied them to me.
>
>I have no problem modeling a VB application for objects and events, however
>I constantly struggle with providing a model when we are implementing an
>tiered approach with ASP, COM, MTS, and RDS.
>
>My struggle stems from the physical "middle-tier". It doesn't play a role
>in the object model nor the event model. Where does it go? Am I mistaken?
>
>One example, an OCX running in a webpage asks a middle-tier object to return
>an object (from my object model). The objects returned have no database
code
>whatsoever, but the middle-tier object did and is running as a stateless
>object. The middle-tier business object simply retrieved the recordset and
>built my object following the rules defined for the object model. I have
>no problem diagramming it though I cannot determine how to document it.
>
>Do the modeling practices change for OOD when the web is a factor?
>
>Thanks, Greg

Greg:

I think I'm in trouble no matter how I answer here. I think this is a better
question for someone who
does formal system designs on a larger scale. So I won't even pretend to
tell you the "best" way
to document your system.

As for me: I tend to break things up. If I have a middle tier, I'd model
and document it on its own,
taking the most care to define the interface to the other tiers. The whole
idea of the multi-tier approach
is to isolate pieces of an application from each other behind such clearly
defined interfaces. So I focus on
specifying/documenting each component, and its interfaces.

But I don't write enterprise applications and am not even familiar with all
the latest formal modeling
approaches and theories. So don't listen to me.

Dan