Naked Objects

The other day I came across “Naked Objects”. Put short, naked objects is a pattern and a framework built on that pattern.  The goal is to remove the need to develop a gui-layer. The gui is automatically generated based on your domain-objects at run-time.

This has several advantages (and ofcourse some drawbacks), but what got me interested is that this will put focus back on modelling the domain objects. Like in real object oriented systems, this means that all the business logic is contained within the domain objects. I’ve seen more than enough systems where the business logic is entagled into the gui-layer, making these system highly coupled and less flexible.

I think Greg Vaughn has found the essence of Naked Objects when describing it like “..primarily a design and requirements gathering tool, and secondarily a UI framework”. TDD looks like a way of testing, but the real power of TDD is actually how it drives the design of the system. The same with Naked Objects. It’s not primarily a way of making gui fast. The point with naked objects, as with TDD, is that it is drives the design of the system, and gives us a more object oriented design. Have a look at his blog “Naked Objects exposed”.  

I’ll do some experimentation with Naked Objects in the time to come, so stay tuned for more posts on the topic.

Tore Vestues