Guideline: Identify Functional Components
This guideline provides advice regarding considerations in identifying functional components.
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Functional components have been described elsewhere, see Concept: Functional Component.  As that concept describes, functional components often are type managers, providing access to corporate data.  They also can be, for example, implementations or exposures of standard business rules.

So, functional "components" can come from the following sources, for example:

  • corporate component libraries that provide information access -- for example, libraries of JPA components
  • exposed data access services -- for example, those JPA components, enabled as services
  • business rules engines
  • in the absence of a business rules engine, corporate component libraries that implement standard business rules
  • exposed business rules services

In cases where you are implementing new functionality, you might need to create your own functional components.  In this case, standard OOAD approaches or guidance from IBM Rational's Component Software Architecture practice can be used to identify and design these components. 

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