Section 4.28. What is the role of business objects in ESA?

4.28. What is the role of business objects in ESA?

Business objects are collections of data and functionality that represent an important business entity. Common business objects are entities, such as business partner, customer, and invoice. Since the beginning of enterprise applications, software designers have used the idea of business objects inside software to represent important parts of the real world. Business objects are not enterprise services, but like them, business objects represent a discrete piece of functionality. And like enterprise services, business objects were created to be reusable, which makes it much easier to build services atop them than to do the same with older, monolithic applications never intended for the purpose. Service providers based on business objects intended to support the creation of enterprise services will automate the creation of certain types of enterprise services. (We discuss business objects further in Chapter 5.)

Conceptually speaking, business objects might contain just about anything. They might exist within composite applications as a piece of dedicated functionality; they might do that and use services to expand the scope of their functionality; or they could be a new piece of functionality that just doesn't exist in any service provider.