What is a better design?

Question

I have a scenario at hand which has some design discussion going on. To break it down in simple words, think about a hierarchy as such Company -----> Customer ------> Orders (ignore the details of how the orders have products etc) if I was to expose an API to work with this, what would be a better design.

a)

Dim comp As New Company
comp.GetInfo(123)
Dim cust As New Customer
cust.Name= "CustomerName"
comp.Add( cust)

b)

Dim custhand As Customerhandler
Dim cust As New Customer
cust.Name= "CustomerName"
custhand.AddCustomer(cust,123)  ''123 is CompanyID

Answer 1

A. Using an ID when you should use an object is a bad idea.

Answer 2

Choosing between the two, I'd choose A, adding a CustomerHandler seems like overcomplicating: either the Company or the Customer should know how to add a Customer to a Company.

Answer 3

I prefer the first method as it is most directly to the point. You create a company object and add a customer to it. Makes sense.

The second method introduces an "er" object which just makes things more difficult to understand and more procedural.

Answer 4

A. The cust object should contain the ID within it, not separate from it.

You might be interested in an Customer.AddCustomer(string, int) overload that makes a new customer with a given name and ID though, but that depends on how you're storing information.

Answer 5

I'd go with (A) but I'd be inclined to change...

Dim comp As New Company
comp.GetInfo(123)

into...

Dim comp As Company = Company.Get(123)

(so add a new shared method to the Company class to return a specific instance of Company)