Data, context and interaction
architectural pattern in computer software development
Data, context, and interaction (DCI) is a paradigm used in computer software to program systems of communicating objects. Its goals are:
To improve the readability of object-oriented code by giving system behavior first-class status;
To cleanly separate code for rapidly changing system behavior (what a system does) versus slowly changing domain knowledge (what a system is), instead of combining both in one class interface;
To help software developers reason about system-level state and behavior instead of only object state and behavior;
To support an object style of thinking that is close to programmers' mental models, rather than the class style of thinking that overshadowed object thinking early in the history of object-oriented programming languages.
The paradigm separates the domain model (data) from use cases (context) and Roles that objects play (interaction). DCI is complementary to model–view–controller (MVC). MVC as a pattern language is still used to separate the data and its processing from presentation.
Description
Data
The data remains "what the system is." The data part of the DCI architecture is its (relatively) static data model with relations. The data design is usually coded up as conventional classes that represent the basic domain structure of the system. These classes are barely smart data, and they explicitly lack the functionality that is peculiar to support of any particular use case. These classes commonly encapsulate the physical storage of the data. These data implement an information structure that comes from the mental model of end users, domain experts, programmers, and other people in the system.
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