Realms

“Bounded Contexts” sounds stuffy and arcane, the sort of term whiteboard warriors would cook up so henceforth I’ll refer to them as “Realms” because Realms have boundaries and Context is King.

    -- Dan Bara

As I’ve mentioned, I think context is important. And I like bounded contexts because boundaries are important too. They help in knowing what you need to worry about and what you don’t.

But as Dan points out, the term bounded contexts is pretty abstract. It’s not a term used in the physical world. Noone points to a patch of ground and says “That’s a bounded context”. Also, “bounded context” sounds static to me. It makes it seem like the bounds are fixed, unchanging.

I think that does a real disservice to people trying to learn about them. Because there’s a lot of tension on the boundaries. Is something inside or outside? Should it be inside or outside? If it were up to the thing itself, would it want to be inside or outside?

Which is where Realms comes in. Realms have clear borders. Often there's some kind of process/ceremony when you change realms. Sometimes there's even a cost. Meanwhile, the realm is held together by a shared something. A context if you will, that all inhabitants of the realm agree on. They might not all like it, but while inside the realm they use that context. Sometimes a group leaves. Realms get split apart. Sometimes realms join, like the cities of Buda and Pesht. Sometimes there’s struggle, and sometimes it’s easy, like Pheasant Island. The key though, is dynamism and tension.

The same holds true with software and bounded contexts. In your typical e-commerce system you’ve got customers, orders, inventory, and more. Which domain is pricing in? Is it part of the inventory? What about sales and specials? Coupons and discount codes? Preferred pricing? Are they all their own domains? Lots of options. All are correct in some ways, but incorrect in others. So you pick one. Then you pay attention to the tension. And when necessary, the boundaries shift. Just like in the physical world.

I’m still going to call them bounded contexts, because in the ubiquitous language of software development the term has shared meaning, but in the back of my head I’ll keep the idea of realms and their tension in mind.