Entity Framework and Domain Layer

Question

Design question on entity framework and Domain Layer -

I am creating a new application using the Entity Framework and the DTOs and Entity Objects would have the same structure but there would be quite a bit of business logic involved. So am wondering which would be the best approach from the following, considering the performance and maintainability of the application

Approach 1:

Use Entity Objects generated from the T4 template as domain objects
create partial classes and add the business logic
List item

Expose the Entity Objects to the UI Layer

Approach 2:

Create DTOs for the domain layer
Add business logic to the DTOs
Implement mapping between the Entity -> DTO and DTO -> Entity
Expose the DTOs to the UI layer

I would say that DTO' should not contain business logic since they should be just data transfers between layers. If it is a completely new app, have you considered Code First approach? And I would suggest to keep business logic without domain objects i.e. entity objects in your case. — milagvoniduak
I would recommend asking these types of conceptual ideas about how to program on programmers.stackexchange.com. — Erik Philips

Neil Smith Neil Smith · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-21T20:03:40

I personally wouldn't put BL in my domain models or dtos. My controllers knows about my domain layer and also knows about a business layer. My controllers ask/tell my BL to do work and domain models are returned. Controller layer then maps domain model to dto and sends the dto to view.

Entity Framework and Domain Layer

2 Answers