Gojko Adzic » Improving performance and scalability with DDD
http://gojko.net/2009/06/23/improving-performance-and-scalability-with-ddd/

Distributed systems are not typically a place where domain driven design is applied. Distributed processing projects often start with an overall architecture vision and an idea about a processing model which basically drives the whole thing, including object design if it exists at all. Elaborate object designs are thought of as something that just gets in the way of distribution and performance, so the idea of spending time to apply DDD principles gets rejected in favour of raw throughput and processing power. However, from my experience, some more advanced DDD concepts can significantly improve performance, scalability and throughput of distributed systems when applied correctly.

One of the most important building blocks of DDD that can help in distributed systems are aggregates. Unfortunately, at least judging by the discussions that I’ve had with client teams over the last few years, aggregates seem to be one of the most underrated and underused building blocks of DDD. I’m probably as guilty as anyone else of misusing aggregates and it took me quite a while to grasp the full potential of that concept. But from this perspective I think that getting aggregates just right is key to making a distributed system work and perform as expected.