Question

I’m a total newbie with ORMs and the DDD, so please, be patient with me. Also, I’m no native speaker so the domain lingo will be a little hard to express in English.

I’m developing a system to control lawsuits.

My domain has an Entity called Case.

Public class Case
{
   public virtual int Id { get; set; }
   public virtual List<Clients> Clients { get; set;}
   public virtual LawsuitType LawsuitType { get; set;}
}

The CaseType is, from what I gathered, a Value Object. It’s a simple type, it has only the case type description. Example: “Divorce”, “Child Support”, etc. It is only the description that interests me. But I don’t want to be a free descriptor. I want to control the options presented to the user, and also do some reports.

So I was thinking to map this on Database with the table “LawsuitTypes”. The table would have a int Id, and a string descriptor.

Can I accomplish that using ComponentMap? Or have I got things wrong and the CaseType is an Entity?

Thanks, Luiz Angelo.

Edit:

Using an enum was suggested. But that wouldn’t work because it would mean that the LawsuitTypes are set by the developer, and not the user. Some users have the power to add/remove LawsuitTypes, while others don’t.

Answer 1

IMHO you should treat LawsuitTypes as an own entity. Keep in mind, that you may want to extend the LawsuitTypes with additional information some day (requirements changes very fast sometimes). What comes in my mind is a “default” property or somethig like that… This means additional work of cource, but this way you are more flexible for future needs.