A case study of the variability consequences of the CQRS pattern in online business software
Jaap Kabbedijk, Slinger Jansen, Sjaak Brinkkemper · 2012
In order to maximize their customer base, business software vendors are trying to offer software products that support the business needs of as many customers as possible. The more standardized a software product is, the easier it will be to serve large numbers of uniform customers. However, if customers are not homogeneous, a trade-off must be made between flexibility and complexity. A case study is presented showing the implementation of the Command Query Responsibility Pattern (CQRS), a pattern dictating the strict separation between commands and queries. The study was performed at a large software product vendor currently designing a software product based on CQRS. Seven sub patterns related to CQRS are identified and discussed. The research results show the CQRS pattern is implemented and how its different sub patterns can result in a high level of variability within a software product and how the different sub patterns can interact to achieve this.