Class For Summarised List Of Complex Objects

Question

Assume I have a class that represents a complex domain object with dozens of properties, such as a pension policy.

The GUI lists all pensions in a summary table that only contains a small subset of those properties.

The application uses an ORM such as .NET's entity framework.

When querying the db to populate the summary table, I don't want to return all details for every policy.

How should I handle this so that loading the summary table only queries the relevent fields? Should I use a seperate object such as PensionSummary? Is there a common approach to this scenario?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I'd use the following approach:

• Define an IPensionSummary interface with all properties necessary;
• Your main Pension implements this interface, and it reflects data from DB (a Pension table, eg);
• In DB, create a View that actually queries only for a small subset of Pension, and retrieves a summarized set of columns (eg, PensionSummary view), this view will be just like another table, but will actually reflect data from other tables when queried;
• Define a PensionSummary class that implements its interface as well, and there it will reflect the PensionSummary view from the DB.

If you have complex domain objects with complex methods, and you want to expose simpler objects with few properties and easier methods, you should use the Facade design pattern, but it seems that this is not your case.

Answer 2

I'd go for a PensionSummary (including some functionality for navigating to the full-featured PensionPolicy).

I'd definitely not create PensionPolicy instances that are only partially filled. IMHO a business object should be able to answer all questions regarding that object, independent of the circumstances (like currently being used only for display in some table). And I'd not try to create workarounds like lazy-loading should some of the empty infos be requested by some call.

So if you really don't want to provide full-featured PensionPolicy objects, then it has to be another class, closely related to the original one.