Editing Business object

{{Short description|Entity within a multi-tiered software application}}
{{Redirect|Business objects|the software company|BusinessObjects|the concept in law|Legal person{{!}}Business entity}}

A '''business object''' is an entity within a [[multitier architecture|multi-tiered]] [[software]] application that works in conjunction with the [[data access layer|data access]] and [[business logic]] layers to transport data.{{cn|date=January 2016}}

Business objects separate [[State (computer science)|state]] from [[Behavioral pattern|behaviour]] because they are communicated across the tiers in a multi-tiered system, while the real work of the application is done in the business tier and does not move across the tiers.

==Function==
Whereas a program may implement [[Class (computer science)|classes]], which typically end in objects managing or executing behaviours, a business object usually does nothing itself but holds a set of [[instance variable]]s or [[Property (programming)|properties]], also known as [[Attribute (computing)|attributes]], and [[Association (object-oriented programming)|associations]] with other business objects, weaving a map of objects representing the business relationships.

A [[domain model]] where business objects do not have behaviour is called an [[anemic domain model]].

== Examples ==
For example, a "Manager" would be a business object where its attributes can be "Name", "Second name", "Age", "Area", "Country" and it could hold a [[One-to-many (data model)|1-n association]] with its employees (a collection of "Employee" instances).

Another example would be a concept like "Process" having "Identifier", "Name", "Start date", "End date" and "Kind" attributes and holding an association with the "Employee" (the responsible) that started it.

==See also==
*[[Active record pattern]], design pattern that stores object data in memory in relational databases, with functions to insert, update, and delete records
*[[Business intelligence]], a field within information technology that provides decision support and business-critical information based on data
*[[Data access object]], design pattern that provides an interface to a type of database or other persistent mechanism, and offers data operations to application calls without exposing database details
*[[Data transfer object]], design pattern where an object carries aggregated data between processes to reduce the number of calls

==References==
<references/>
*Rockford Lhotka, Visual Basic 6.0 Business Objects, {{ISBN|1-86100-107-X}}
*Rockford Lhotka, Expert C# Business Objects, {{ISBN|1-59059-344-8}}
*Rockford Lhotka, Expert One-on-One Visual Basic .NET Business Objects, {{ISBN|1-59059-145-3}}

==External links==
*[http://www.martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/domainModel.html A definition of domain model] by [[Martin Fowler (software engineer)|Martin Fowler]]
*[http://martinfowler.com/bliki/AnemicDomainModel.html Anemic Domain Model] by Martin Fowler

[[Category:Programming constructs]]


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