Hi Im curious about how DDD is really implemented using Fluent Nhibernate. for example I have an entity class called User and another class called UserProfile, as far as Im concerned UserProfile is not an entity class but a value type, and should not realy have an identity as such if not associated with a User entity. Now to implement practically the user profile will ideally be stored in a database table called UserProfile and I cant see how I can get away from having a unique Id for this table. I am also using FluentNhibernate as an ORM and I beleive THE UserProfile class needs to have an Id in order to be mapped correctly. So what happens to the concept of values types, aggregate root etc, Is it really possible to implement a true DDD with fluent Nhibernate or is it just that my understanding of DDD is poor. All I have really seen is a lot of theory about the whole thing, but I have not seen a project that really has true DDD using NHibernate. I am a bit confused now, any help is appreciated
Update
Okay after a bit of reading up I understand that repositores are used to manage Aggregate roots, clears up some of the issues but ultimately the userprofile class is not an aggregare root, so should I still give it a Id? it obviously needs one in the database table so Im assuming the class needs an Id as well. But does this not go against the principle of DDD? what is the way around this?
It will need an Id to be supported by your ORM (NHibernate), and that’s perfectly fine. The distinction between Entities and Value Types is their concepts of identity and lifetime. Having an Id field is simply an implementation detail here.