Naked Objects - Benefits

Benefits

Pawson's thesis claims four benefits for the pattern:

• A faster development cycle, because there are fewer layers to develop. In a more conventional design, the developer must define and implement three or more separate layers: the domain object layer, the presentation layer, and the task or process scripts that connect the two. (If the naked objects pattern is combined with object-relational mapping or an object database, then it is possible to create all layers of the system from the domain object definitions alone; however, this does not form part of the naked objects pattern per se.) The thesis includes a case study comparing two different implementations of the same application: one based on a conventional '4-layer' implementation; the other using naked objects.

• Greater agility, referring to the ease with which an application may be altered to accommodate future changes in business requirements. In part this arises from the reduction in the number of developed layers that must be kept in synchronisation. However the claim is also made that the enforced 1:1 correspondence between the user presentation and the domain model, forces higher-quality object modelling, which in turn improves the agility.

• A more empowering style of user interface. This benefit is really attributable to the resulting object-oriented user interface (OOUI), rather than to naked objects per se, although the argument is made that naked objects makes it much easier to conceive and to implement an OOUI.

• Easier requirements analysis. The argument here is that with the naked objects pattern, the domain objects form a common language between users and developers and that this common language facilitates the process of discussing requirements - because there are no other representations to discuss. Combined with the faster development cycle, it becomes possible to prototype functional applications in real time.