Vista Tutorial - Problem with circular references

Hi newsgroup

I have a little problem in designing my assemblies.

Following situation:

1. I have 3 Assemblies: Assembly_A, Assembly_B and Assembly_C
2. Assembly_A has a Collection of Assembly_C
3. Assembly_B has as Collection of Assembly_C
4. Assembly_C has a Object of Assembly_A and another one of Assembly_B

So that's the situation and the situation must be like this (relationally)
because Assembly_A and Assembly_B represent contractors and Assembly_C
represents the contract. A contract is made between A and B.

Both contractors can have n contracts. A contract has one A and one B.

When trying to build this solution with team build the build process stops
in case of circular references.
It is logical, because A cannot be build until C is build and C cannot be
build until A is build.

Now my question. Is there a desing that don't destry the logic of the
depencies between the assemblies but don't result in build errors.

If not, what kind of design should I use for cases like this?

Thanks for every suggestions and help!

Best regards

D.H. Lee

If possible, commonly used objects should be pushed into common assemblies.
So if what C uses in A doesn't have to be in A but could be in
MyCommonStuff.dll (that knows nothing about A, B or C) then so much the
better. Look seriously at whether or not you can achieve this. But if that's
not possible then a couple of general comments :

1) use interfaces.

If A needs B and B needs C and C needs A, then change it so that C knows
absolutely nothing about A but uses an interface (defined in
MyCommonStuff.dll) that A supports.

2) dynamic loading and object creation

You can write C so that at run time it gets passed a few strings that tell
it you need type "MyNameSpace.MyType" and its in assembly "MyDll_C.dll" The
type supports an interface that C knows about and hey presto it works.

A circular reference definitely means your design needs changing.

HTH,

Adam.

"don H. Lee" <nospam@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:O5TTJ3icJHA.1532@xxxxxx

On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 08:40:03 +0100, "don H. Lee" <nospam@xxxxxx> wrote:
I would probably use and Interface to represent the contractors in C.
A and B would implement that Interface, which would be defined in a
fourth assembly that does not reference any of the others.