Domain-Driven Design Reference: Definitions and Pattern Summaries

Domain-Driven Design (DDD) is an approach to software development for complex businesses and other domains. DDD tackles that complexity by focusing the team's attention on knowledge of the domain, picking apart the most tricky, intricate problems with models, and shaping the software around those models. Easier said than done! The techniques of DDD help us approach this systematically.
This reference gives a quick and authoritative summary of the key concepts of DDD. It is not meant as a learning introduction to the subject. Eric Evans' original book and a handful of others explain DDD in depth from different perspectives. On the other hand, we often need to scan a topic quickly or get the gist of a particular pattern. That is the purpose of this reference. It is complementary to the more discursive books.
The starting point of this text was a set of excerpts from the original book by Eric Evans, Domain-Driven-Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software, 2004 - in particular, the pattern summaries, which were placed in the Creative Commons by Evans and the publisher, Pearson Education. In this reference, those original summaries have been updated and expanded with new content.
The practice and understanding of DDD has not stood still over the past decade, and Evans has taken this chance to document some important refinements. Some of the patterns and definitions have been edited or rewritten by Evans to clarify the original intent. Three patterns have been added, describing concepts whose usefulness and importance has emerged in the intervening years. Also, the sequence and grouping of the topics has been changed significantly to better emphasize the core principles.
This is an up-to-date, quick reference to DDD.

Eric Evans is the author of Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software, 2004. He coined the term domain-driven design (DDD) and laid out its principles in that book. Since then he has continued to focus his energies in the area of DDD, teaching and continuing to apply DDD on real projects, as well as collaborating with other leaders in both the DDD community and the broader software development community.