Factory Schemas

I recently decided to do a series of articles on factory schemas.

It has become obvious over the last while that the factory schema has enormous power both as a means to describe a factory and its content, a means to describe the factory itself and a means to offer huge benefits to the factory user, and also a means to solve larger problems we have in designing software.

Once you start to realise how these schemas are used, you really start to see the potential of factories in revolutionising the development of software in our industry today.

I wanted to write several articles to help you understand what a schema is, how to create one as a factory builder, and how it may be viewed by the users of your factory. I then wanted to explore an idea I had some time ago, that now becomes possible to realise with a factory schema in place.

My first article ‘What is a Factory Schema’ will address a common misunderstanding of the factory schema and aims to help you understand what it is in concrete terms.

The second article in the series ‘Defining a Factory Schema’ tackles how to define a schema for your factory by way of an example.

In the third article ‘A Use for the Factory Schema’ I describe a factory users view on the schema, and how it provides them with guidance through your factory.

In the final article ‘File | New | Blank Problem (Part II)’, (a continuation of a previous theme) I delve into how the factory schema will aid us, (some time down the road), in addressing how to locate and choose the right factory for the problem we are facing. This will be intended to show what could be possible with factories in the future once they are in common use.