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Other than implementation details, are DDD aggregates similar to GoF's facade ?

+6  A: 

A GoF Façade, much like a real façade, hides the underlying implementation complexity by creating another abstraction; it hides a complex and generally separate system (or subsystem) behind a simple to use interface. For example, façade for a game might have the methods start, update and pause; completely hiding the implementation of the game, but providing a high-level way to interact with it.

The DDD aggregate on the other hand is a way of specifying a "has-a" relation between objects that have a stronger correlation than normal references. They can be seen as nodes in a tree of domain objects and they are generally threated as a single unit in terms of data exchange.

Jasper Bekkers