Question about Class Design

absolutezero · January 6th, 2009, 10:00 AM

Hello,
I am working on a class library, a sort of framework I guess, and am looking for some advice. Right now I am working with just my objects that represent database tables. Every single object in my class library has a series of fields that are part of each database table (ID, Created Date, etc) so, for this, I have created a base class that all of my objects inherit from similar to:

Code:

   public abstract class BaseObject
   {
      public int ID {get; set;}
      public DateTime CreatedDate {get; set;}
      //etc
   }

This isn't a problem. The question that I have is related to interfaces and, i suppose a "best practice". Initially I was just going to add all of the other members for my object directly into the class, however, I toyed around with the thought of using an interface for the implementation of the members to tie everything together. Furthermore I am putting the CRUD methods directly on the object and was thinking about putting these inside of the interface as well but I am torn since a method defined in an interface can not be implemented as static in the inheriting class.

I suppose it is a matter of opinion whether one prefers to do:

Code:

  FooClass f = new FooClass();
  f.LoadById(1);
  Console.WriteLine(f.Name);

or

Code:

   FooClass f = FooClass.LoadById(1);
   Console.WriteLine(f.Name);

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks

r_adarsh · January 22nd, 2009, 11:22 AM

A nice article by Imar about passing Business Entities across layers in N-Tier architecture. He has also briefly touched upon the choice of smart or dumb classes while designing Business Entities.
http://imar.spaanjaars.com/QuickDocId.aspx?quickdoc=416

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Adi