Overview

Pronounced “Sharp Architecture,” this is a solid architectural foundation for rapidly building maintainable web applications leveraging the ASP.NET MVC framework with NHibernate. The primary advantage to be sought in using any architectural framework is to decrease the code one has to write while increasing the quality of the end product. A framework should enable developers to spend little time on infrastructure details while allowing them to focus their attentions on the domain and user experience. Accordingly, S#arp Architecture adheres to the following key principles:

  • Focused on Domain Driven Design
  • Loosely coupled
  • Preconfigured Infrastructure
  • Open Ended Presentation

The overall goal of this is to allow developers to worry less about application “plumbing” and to spend most of their time on adding value for the client by focusing on the business logic and developing a rich user experience.

Absolutely essential reading is Eric Evans’ Domain Driven Design. For a quick introduction to the subject, see Domain Driven Design Quickly which is a concise summary of Evans’ classic work. Other useful background material, albeit dated, includes NHibernate Best Practices. Although there are major infrastructural changes from the referenced article when compared to the current S#arp Architecture, the general structure is very similar and the background reading is helpful in understanding many of the ideas behind this development foundation.