Use Isis for Prototyping and Development

Isis is great for rapid prototyping, because all you need to write in order to get an application up-and-running is the domain model objects.

By focussing just on the domain, you'll also find that you start to develop a ubiquitous language - a set of terms and concepts that the entire team (business and technologists alike) have a shared understanding.

Once you've sketched out your domain model, you can then either start-over using your preferred framework, or you might choose to take the domain model forward into more formal specification and testing.

Isis programming model

Isis defines a set of programming conventions - a programming model - from which it infers the structure of your domain objects.

This programming model is essentially POJOs, supplemented with a number of annotations and method naming conventions. It is fully documented in the Isis application library, (the applib). Most of the important conventions are documented in the cheat sheet.

Custom extensions

As well as the conventions that Isis defines, you are free to also define your own programming conventions. Each aspect - or facet - of the programming model is defined through the FacetFactory API, and the set of active FacetFactorys is specified through the ProgrammingModel API.

We expect that most developers won't bother to customise the programming model, and even if you do, you'll probably just want to tweak Isis' defaults, rather than replace them wholesale. It's good to know you have the option though. One reason you might want to do this is to write domain models that are compatible with some other framework.

Isis customisability is also the basis by which the framework supports other programming languages. For example, the Groovy progmodel allows you to write your domain objects using the Groovy programming language.