

Content Objects: My Formula for Information Architecture - JoelMarsh
http://thehipperelement.tumblr.com/post/80589112409/content-objects-my-formula-for-information

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sophacles
Seems like the author has stumbled upon SOA - this "content object" idea is
basically just a restating of the "business object" from that philosophy. For
more thinking along lines like this, I suggest reading up on SOA concepts.
They perhaps aren't as widely applicable as the hardcore adherents believe
(isn't this always true?), but they can be really useful in your bag of
tricks.

 _note_ \- rereading this comment the first bit comes across as snarky, but I
don't mean it as such. It's a good article and good concept to know, just
trying to pass on other search terms for similar modes of thought.

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JoelMarsh
Interesting. Great comment!

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DatBear
Isn't this how pretty much everyone builds pretty much everything? I didn't
know there was a way to build web applications without knowing what data
they're based on...

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bryanthompson
I think what he's getting at is that he's modeling the content expectations
first, with no regard to the actual data they are based on. My team builds a
lot of things this way - we start with mockups & presenters that have no
actual data. Once we have that all locked in and approved, we start thinking
about the data structures. Several of our projects deal with some really
complex weather, insurance, and other info that can be hard to model &
assemble upfront... so once we have our presenters worked out, it's rather
easy to then decide how to model it, build our services and delivery
mechanisms, and move forward.

We've found that going this direction leads to cleaner models, faster
execution, and more decoupling of the entire front end from the entire back-
end. We can query & build our data delivery however we need and feed it to the
presenter as fast dumb objects (typically as Hamsterdam structs).

edit: removed redundantish wordery.

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tootie
As someone who builds a lot of content-driven sites, this seems too
simplistic. How many content objecta would there by on, say, nytimes.com.

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JoelMarsh
Registered users.

Authors.

Articles.

Comments.

Did I miss anything significant?

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paulyg
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