Work

Root Contracting: A Novel Method and Utility for Implementing Design by Contract in Domain-Driven Design with Event Sourcing

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Event-Sourced Systems (ESSs) that adopt Domain-Driven Design (DDD) are becoming more popular because of their intuitive business process modeling and improved auditability, scalability, and flexibility. However, ensuring the correctness of domain models—particularly event-sourced aggregates (ESAs)—remains challenging. To address this, we propose root contracting, a novel, constrained, and lightweight adaptation of Design by Contract (DbC), specifying the precondition, postcondition, and class invariant exclusively at aggregate roots. Root contracting simplifies correctness enforcement by leveraging DDD principles aligned with DbC and the standardized ESA code structure. We offer uContract, a Java open-source utility that realizes root contracting, enabling automated verification of ESAs with configurable runtime overhead. Through performance evaluation and methodological discussion, we demonstrate that root contracting effectively bridges formal correctness with practical domain modeling. Our approach provides developers with a tool to streamline development workflows, potentially reducing testing overhead and supporting integration with methodologies like Behavior-Driven Development (BDD).

Source: Electronics

DOI: 10.3390/electronics14214205

Authors: Chien-Tsun Chen, Yi-Chun Yen, Yu-Hsiang Hu, Yu Chin Cheng

Institution: National Taipei University of Technology

Language: English

Topic: Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies

Subfield: Artificial Intelligence

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,896

Funder: National Science and Technology Council