Bounded Context & System Boundaries

The Forms Builder domain operates as an autonomous bounded context within the Obelaw enterprise ecosystem. It establishes explicit linguistic and functional boundaries around declarative form schema authoring, dynamic field component trees, directed acyclic dependency graphs, immutable schema versioning, multi-step draft sessions, and authoritative submission validation.

Establishing strict boundaries ensures that dynamic question structures, branching conditions, and response validations remain completely decoupled from specific database table migrations, downstream workflow step orchestration, physical file storage mechanics, and enterprise identity protocols.

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1. Subdomain Classification & Strategic Investment

Applying the strategic classification methodology from Vlad Khononov’s Learning Domain-Driven Design, the capabilities of the dynamic forms space are partitioned based on business differentiation and technical complexity:

flowchart TD
    subgraph CoreDomain["Core Domain: High Complexity & Strategic Differentiation"]
        SchemaModeling["Declarative Schema Modeling & Component Hierarchy"]
        DagEngine["Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) Logic & Calculation Engine"]
        VersionFreeze["The Schema Freeze Law & Version Governance"]
        SubmissionValidation["Atomic Server-Side Submission Validation Engine"]
    end

    subgraph SupportingDomain["Supporting Domain: Custom Operational Capabilities"]
        DraftSessionMgmt["Multi-Step Draft Session & Autosave State Machine"]
        TabularProjection["Tabular Data Flattening & Export Projections"]
        AccessQuotaPolicy["Form Access Control, Expiry & Submission Quotas"]
    end

    subgraph GenericDomain["Generic Domain: Standardized / Platform Services"]
        UserIdentity["User Authentication & Access (IAM)"]
        FileStorage["Binary File & Attachment Storage (S3 / Blob)"]
        WorkflowOrchestration["Approval Chains & Workflow Routing (BPMN)"]
        NotificationDispatch["Email & Webhook Notification Dispatch"]
        PdfRendering["Document Print & PDF Generation Service"]
    end

    CoreDomain -.->|Coordinates with| SupportingDomain
    SupportingDomain -.->|Integrates via ACL / Events with| GenericDomain

Strategic Classifications Explained

• Core Domain: Modeling abstract form components, calculating cycle-free conditional visibility graphs, enforcing immutable schema version freezing, and validating responses server-side form the intellectual core of the domain. These represent proprietary business logic requiring custom tactical modeling.
• Supporting Domain: Managing in-progress draft sessions, converting hierarchical nested responses into flat tabular projections (for Excel/CSV analysis), and enforcing submission quota caps are custom supporting capabilities tailored to enterprise productivity.
• Generic Domain: Identity authentication, binary storage of uploaded PDFs/images, downstream BPMN workflow routing, and email dispatch are standardized enterprise concerns. The Forms Builder integrates with them via formal Anti-Corruption Layers (ACL) and domain event contracts.

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2. In-Scope Operational Capabilities

The Forms Builder bounded context is strictly responsible for the following domain capabilities:

• Declarative Form Schema Authoring: Constructing hierarchical form structures composed of Pages, Sections, and typed Field Controls (Text, Number, Date, Time, Single-Choice Radio/Select, Multiple-Choice Checkbox, Switch, File Upload, Digital Signature, Computed/Formula, Rating Scale, and Matrix/Repeater).
• Conditional Visibility & Logic Graph Evaluation: Modeling and validating rules that dynamically display, hide, require, or disable fields based on user answers, guaranteeing cycle-free evaluation via Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG).
• Dynamic Field Calculation & Formula Processing: Computing values in real-time based on mathematical expressions (e.g., summing matrix rows, calculating BMI from height and weight, determining risk scores).
• Schema Versioning & Immutability Governance: Enforcing the transition of schema versions through Draft, ActivePublished, Deprecated, and Archived states, permanently freezing any schema that has collected live submissions.
• Multi-Step Draft Session State Machine: Managing progressive user submissions, persisting unsubmitted draft state, verifying step-level completion gates, and issuing cryptographically signed resumption tokens.
• Authoritative Submission Ingestion & Validation: Re-evaluating submitted payloads server-side against the exact historical schema version, validating regex patterns, numerical ranges, mandatory field rules, and computing tamper-evident response hashes.
• Contextual Data Hydration: Populating initial form field values from external enterprise data tokens without coupling form blueprints to external database columns.
• Submission Access Control & Quota Management: Enforcing access restrictions (public, authenticated, single-use token, password-protected), expiration timestamps, and maximum submission limits.

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3. Out-of-Scope Boundaries

To maintain domain purity and prevent monolithic coupling, the Forms Builder context explicitly excludes external enterprise responsibilities:

Out-of-Scope Concern	Correct Ownership	Architectural Rationale
User authentication, credential verification, and enterprise SSO/SAML policies	Identity & Access Management (IAM)	Forms Builder consumes verified submitter IDs via an ACL; IAM owns user directories, password hashing, and OAuth tokens.
Physical binary storage of uploaded documents, images, and attachments	Object Storage Service (S3 / Blob)	Forms Builder stores file metadata (storage key, byte size, MIME type, cryptographic checksum); Object Storage owns physical binary blocks.
Multi-tier managerial approvals, task assignments, and BPMN workflow choreography	Workflow / BPMN Engine	Forms Builder emits FormSubmissionValidated; the Workflow engine decides which department approves or reviews the submission.
ERP transactional ledger mutations, order creation, and invoice generation	Sales / Purchase / Accounting Domains	Forms Builder captures raw business intake; operational domains ingest validated submission events and translate them into domain orders.
Pixel-perfect PDF report rendering, watermark styling, and document printing	Document Generation Service	Forms Builder provides raw structured data; Document Generation renders styled print layouts.
Bulk email distribution, SMS gateways, and marketing notification dispatch	Notification Engine	Forms Builder emits domain events; Notification Engine manages SMTP delivery, bounce rates, and communication templates.

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4. Context Mapping & Integration Relationships

The Forms Builder bounded context interacts with surrounding enterprise domains through formal DDD relationships:

flowchart LR
    IAM["IAM / Identity"] -->|Customer-Supplier<br/>Upstream to Downstream| FORMS["Forms Builder Context"]
    STORAGE["Object Storage Service"] <-->|Anti-Corruption Layer<br/>Presigned Tokens| FORMS
    FORMS -->|Customer-Supplier<br/>Upstream to Downstream| BPMN["Workflow / BPMN Engine"]
    FORMS -->|Customer-Supplier<br/>Upstream to Downstream| ERP["ERP / Core Domains"]
    FORMS -->|Published Language<br/>Tabular Projections| ANALYTICS["Data Lake & BI"]

Integration Relationship Details

Integrating Context	Relationship Type	Interaction Pattern	Business Purpose
IAM / Identity	Upstream (IAM) to Downstream (Forms)	Customer-Supplier	Forms Builder validates user authorization and captures verified submitter identity for restricted forms.
Object Storage Service	Bidirectional	Anti-Corruption Layer (ACL)	Forms Builder issues presigned upload URLs and verifies file upload receipts without handling binary streams directly.
Workflow / BPMN Engine	Upstream (Forms) to Downstream (BPMN)	Customer-Supplier	Forms Builder publishes FormSubmissionValidated events, triggering automated business approval workflows.
ERP & Operational Domains	Upstream (Forms) to Downstream (ERP)	Customer-Supplier	Operational contexts (CRM, Procurement, HR) ingest validated form answers to instantiate enterprise entities.
Data Lake & Analytics	Upstream (Forms) to Downstream (Analytics)	Published Language (PL)	Provides flattened, schema-mapped tabular projections for business intelligence without exposing internal aggregate structures.

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5. Anti-Corruption Layer (ACL) Specifications

To safeguard the Forms Builder domain from foreign schemas and infrastructure dependencies, explicit Anti-Corruption Layers translate external inputs:

1. Submitter Identity ACL

The Forms Builder context must never depend on the schema of user tables or employee directories:

• Accepts external identity tokens from IAM.
• Maps them into a lightweight SubmitterContext Value Object containing: SubmitterType (Anonymous, AuthenticatedUser, InvitedGuest), SubmitterReferenceId, TenantId, and AssignedRoles.
• Enforces access policy validation within the form aggregate without querying internal IAM database tables.

2. Object Storage Asset ACL

File uploads present significant security and bandwidth risks if handled directly by the application server:

• When a user initiates a file upload control, the ACL requests a short-lived presigned upload URL from the Object Storage service.
• Upon upload completion, the ACL validates the asset receipt: verifies expected file extension against field constraints, checks maximum byte thresholds, and computes an SHA-256 integrity hash.
• Binds the resulting FileAssetDescriptor value object into the form answer payload, maintaining zero direct file handle dependencies.

3. Contextual Data Hydration ACL

Enterprise forms often require pre-population with data from external records (e.g., pulling a customer’s address from CRM or an asset’s serial number from Inventory):

• Defines an abstract HydrationDataProvider contract using a standardized parameter map.
• External adapters translate source domain entities into key-value pairs matching designated FieldIdentifier hydration tokens.
• Ensures that if the upstream CRM schema changes, only the external adapter requires modification; the form schema blueprint remains untouched.