Hello,

I have read about the Aggregate Pattern but I'm confused about something here. The pattern states that all the objects belonging to the aggregate should be accessed via the Aggregate Root, and not directly.

And I'm assuming that is the reason why they say you should have a single Repository per Aggregate.

But I think this adds a noticeable overhead to the application. For example, in a typical Web-based application, what if I want to get an object belonging to an aggregate (which is NOT the aggregate root)? I'll have to call Repository.GetAggregateRootObject(), which loads the aggregate root and all its child objects, and then iterate through the child objects to find the one I'm looking for. In other words, I'm loading lots of data and throwing them out except the particular object I'm looking for.

Is there something I'm missing here?

PS: I know some of you may suggest that we can improve performance with Lazy Loading. But that's not what I'm asking here... The aggregate pattern requires that all objects belonging to the aggregate be loaded together, so we can enforce business rules.