What is the difference...or benefit...of using a project of type "Class Library"...I currently have all my classes in a Web App project (and thats all thats in there)...should I change this?

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Beware of programmers with screwdrivers...

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Beware of programmers with screwdrivers...

Using class libraries makes it much easier to reuse the code you are doing; that is, if you design your solution properly.

E.g. you might want to put the database layer in a class library with some common functionality, which you can use in some other project. If the code is integrated in the entire solution, it is much harder to extract it later. I have made an RSS class library, which I can use in every thing I do to write RSS feeds, and therefore I do not have to rewrite the trivial methods each time.

IMO well-written code is also well-designed, which IMO means modularized code.

Jacob.

thanks jacob!

I can see the benefits of the database layer, but I don't fully understand how you're suggesting I reuse it. My classes are nearly all database related, but my databases are different design for different projects. How would I design the data access layer so I can reuse it? Are there specific, possibly more generic components or methods I should use?

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Beware of programmers with screwdrivers...

Well, you can see the class libraries as the stuff that you think would be nice to have in general beside the classes etc. provided my the framework. So it is really a matter of abstraction.

Class libraries are to be designed generic so for the database example there should not be any information about a specific database, table etc. Perhaps you would like a method to extract a column from a specific table. The signature might look as follows... ... and somedatatype is the format in which you in general would like to get you extract. This is a simple example but keep in mind that the methods have to be generic to be reuseable.

Jacob.