What is a business object?

Business objects are programming structures that abstract the things/concepts in the business that a program is written to represent. These things should be recognizable to a non-technical person familiar with the business, like the users, business analysts, etc. For example, in a video rental store business we can assume there would be DVDs, VHS tapes, customers, rental orders, late fees, etc. In software representing that business there would be business objects that represent DVDs, VHS tapes, customers, rental orders, late fees, etc. Each object has data that describes or is attributed to the object and methods that act on that data. For example, a DVD may have a Title and DateReleased attributes (data), and may have the method “calculate rental price.” to determine how much it costs to rent the DVD.

These objects are tangible with real-world meanings, however, there are other business objects that are a bit more conceptual but still have a definite intellectual meaning like Rental Agreement or Rental Policies. These things are less tangible, but real-world none the less.

An object classified as a business object does not contain code to validate its data, store its data, build itself from data, etc. The smarts inside the object and methods all have to do with business logic

See: Business Object (aka Domain Object)